ith a variable number of ministers without portfolio,
comprise the Council of State, an advisory body convened by the crown
as occasion requires. All ministers are appointed, directly or
indirectly, and all may be dismissed, by the king. All must be Belgian
citizens, and no member of the royal family may be tendered an
appointment. Ministers are all but invariably members of one or the
other of the legislative houses, principally of the House of
Representatives.[749] Whether members or not, they are privileged to
attend all sessions and to be heard at their own request. The houses,
indeed, possess the right to demand their attendance. But no minister
may vote, save in a house of which he is a member.[750]

[Footnote 749: The minister of war, regularly an
active military official, has been usually not a
legislative member. Aside from this one post,
however, the custom of selecting ministers
exclusively from the chambers has been followed
almost as rigorously in Belgium as in Great
Britain. And so largely are the ministers taken
from the lower house that the Senate not
infrequently has no representative at all in the
cabinet.]

[Footnote 750: Arts. 86-91. Dodd, Modern
Constitutions, I., 139-140.]

Belgium is one of the few continental states in which the parliamentary
system is thoroughly operative. At no point is the constitution more
explicit than in its stipulation of the responsibility of ministers.
Not only is it declared that the king's ministers are responsible; it
is stipulated that "no decree of the king shall take effect unless it
is countersigned by a minister, who, by that act alone, renders himself
responsible for it"; also that "in no case shall the verbal or (p. 537)
written order of the king relieve a minister of responsibility."[751]
The House of Representatives is vested with the right to accuse
ministers and to arraign them before the Court of Cassation; and the
king may not pardon a minister who has been sentenced by this
tribunal, save upon request of one of the two legislative chambers. A
ministry which finds that it cannot command the support of a majority
in the House of Representatives has the right to determine upon the
dissolution of either of the houses, or of bot