ber is renewed every two years. In Baden there has been rather
more progress than in the majority of German states toward liberal and
responsible government.[414]

[Footnote 414: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I.,
345; K. Schenkel, Das Staatsrecht des
Grossherzogthums Baden (Freiburg and Tuebingen,
1884), in Marquardsen's Handbuch.]

II. THE LESSER MONARCHIES AND THE CITY REPUBLICS

*301. Monarchical Variations.*--With relatively unimportant exceptions,
the governments of the remaining seventeen German monarchies exhibit
features substantially similar to those of the governments that (p. 280)
have been described. In each of the states, except the two
grand-duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz, there
is a written constitution, promulgated, in most instances, during the
second or third quarter of the nineteenth century.[415] Executive
power in each is vested in the monarch; legislative power in the
monarch and a Landtag, or assembly. The assembly consists ordinarily
of a single chamber, varying in membership from twelve to forty-eight;
and in most instances the members are chosen, at least in part, on a
basis of manhood suffrage. In some states, as the principality of
Lippe, the three-class electoral system prevails; and elections are
still very commonly indirect. The trend toward liberalism is, however,
all but universal, and within recent years numbers of important
changes, e.g., the substitution of direct for indirect elections in
Oldenburg and in Saxe-Weimar in 1909, have been brought about. In the
curiously intertwined grand-duchies of Mecklenburg the common Landtag
remains a typically mediaeval assemblage of estates, based, in the
main, on the tenure of land.[416]

[Footnote 415: The dates of the original
promulgation of constitutions at present in
operation are: Saxe-Weimar, 1816; Hesse, 1820;
Saxe-Meiningen, 1829; Saxe-Altenburg, 1832;
Brunswick, 1832; Lippe, 1836; Oldenburg, 1852;
Waldeck, 1852; Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1852; Reuss
Juengerer Linie, 1852 and 1856;
Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, 1854;
Schwartzburg-Sonderhausen, 1857; Anhalt, 1859;
Reuss Aelterer Linie, 1867; and Schaumburg-Lippe,
1868.]