izenship, residence
in Belgium, attainment of the age of twenty-five, and possession of
civil and political rights. Deputies receive an honorarium of 4,000
francs a year, together with free transportation upon all State and
concessionary railways between the places of their respective
residences and Brussels, or any other city in which a session may be
held.

[Footnote 758: This is true also of the Senate.]

The Belgian electoral system at the present day is noteworthy by
reason of three facts: (1) it is based upon the principle of universal
manhood suffrage; (2) it embraces a scheme of plural voting; and (3)
it provides for the proportional representation of parties. Under the
original constitution of 1831 the franchise, while not illiberal for
the time, was restricted by property qualifications of a somewhat
sweeping character. Deputies were elected by those citizens only who
paid yearly a direct tax varying in amount, but in no instance of less
than twenty florins. In 1848 there was enacted a series of (p. 540)
electoral laws whereby the property qualification was reduced to a
uniform level of twenty florins and the number of voters was virtually
doubled. With this arrangement the Liberals were by no means
satisfied, and agitation in behalf of a broader electorate was
steadily maintained. As early as 1865 the Liberal demands were
actively re-enforced by those of organizations of workingmen, and in
1870 the Catholic ministry found itself obliged to sanction a
considerable extension of the franchise in elections within the
provinces and the communes. After 1880 the brunt of the electoral
propaganda was borne by the Socialists, and the campaign for
constitutional revision was directed almost solely against the 47th
article of the fundamental law, in which was contained the original
stipulation respecting the franchise. Since 1830 the population of
Belgium had all but doubled, and there had been in the country an
enormous increase of popular intelligence and of economic prosperity.
That in a population of 6,000,000 (in 1890) there should be an
electorate of but 135,000 was a sufficiently obvious anomaly. The
broadly democratic system by which members of the French Chamber of
Deputies and of the German Reichstag were elected was proclaimed by
the revisionists to be the ideal which it was hoped to realize in
Belgium.

*595. The Electoral Reform Act of 1893.*--In 1890 the Catholic ministry,
r