this guarantee against the wholesale creation of
peers was brought forward with the object of
winning for the Government's Universal Suffrage
Bill the assent of the upper chamber.]

*517. The House of Representatives: Composition.*--The lower chamber, as
constituted by fundamental law of 1867, was made up of 203
representatives, apportioned among the several provinces and elected
by the provincial diets. The system worked poorly, and a law of 1868
authorized the voters of a province to elect the stipulated quota of
representatives in the event that the Diet failed to do so. Still
there was difficulty, arising largely from the racial rivalries in the
provinces, and by an amendment of April 2, 1873, the right of election
was vested exclusively in the enfranchised inhabitants of the Empire.
The number of members was at the same time increased to 353, though
without modifying the proportion of representatives of the various
provinces. Further amendment, in 1896, brought up the membership to
425, where it remained until 1907, when it was raised to the present
figure, 516.

*518. Early Electoral Arrangements: Law of 1873.*--The broadly
democratic electoral system which prevails in the Austrian dominions
to-day is a very recent creation. With the introduction of
constitutionalism in 1867 the problem of the franchise became one of
peculiar and increasing difficulty, and the process by which the
Empire has been brought laboriously to its present condition of
democracy has constituted one of the most tortuous chapters in recent
political history. The conditions by which from the outset the problem
was complicated were three in number: first, the large survival of
self-assertiveness on the part of the various provinces among whom
parliamentary representatives were to be distributed; second, the
keenness of the ambitions of the several racial elements for parliamentary
power; and third, the utter lack of experience and of traditions (p. 467)
on the part of the Austrian peoples in the matter of democratic
government.

When, in 1873, the right of electing deputies was withdrawn from the
provincial diets it was conferred, without the establishment of a new
electorate, upon those elements of the provincial populations which
had been accustomed to take part in the election of the local diets.
These were four in number: (1) the great landowners, comprising those