f bailiffs
and sub-officials. Each province has a Landsthing, or assembly, which
meets for a few days annually, in September, under the presidency of a
member designated by the crown. All members are elected directly by
the voters of the towns and rural districts, in accordance with the
principle of proportional representation, and under a body of
franchise regulations which, while much liberalized in 1909, still is
based essentially upon property-holding. The function of the
Landsthing is the enactment of provincial legislation and the general
supervision of provincial affairs. In a few of the larger
towns--Stockholm, Goeteborg, Malmoe, Norrkoeping, and Gaefle--these
functions are vested in a separate municipal council. The conditions
under which purely local affairs are administered are regulated by the
communal laws of March 21, 1862. Each rural parish and each town
comprises a self-governing commune. Each has an assembly, composed of
all taxpayers, which passes ordinances, elects minor officials, and
decides petty questions of purely communal concern.

[Footnote 836: One of these comprises simply the
city of Stockholm.]

PART IX.--THE IBERIAN STATES (p. 603)

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF CONSTITUTIONALISM

*667. The Napoleonic Regime and the National Resistance.*--It was the
fortune of the kingdom of Spain, as it was that of the several Italian
states, to be made tributary to the dominion of Napoleon; and in
Spain, as in Italy, the first phase of the growth of constitutional
government fell within the period covered by the Corsican's
ascendancy. Starting with the purpose of punishing Portugal for her
refusal to break with Great Britain, Napoleon, during the years
1807-1808, worked out gradually an Iberian policy which comprehended
not only the subversion of the independent Portuguese monarchy but
also the reduction of Spain to the status of a subject kingdom. In
pursuance of this programme French troops began, in February, 1808,
the occupation of Spanish strongholds, including the capital. The aged
Bourbon king, Charles IV., was induced to renounce his throne and the
crown prince Ferdinand his claim to the succession, and, June 6,
Joseph Bonaparte, since 1806 king of Naples, was designated sovereign.
An assembly of ninety-one pliant Spanish notables, convened at Bayonne
in the guise of a