ed a parliamentary system based upon
the mediaeval principle of orders or estates. Throughout upwards of a
hundred years, however, the scheme of parliamentary organization which
was to take the place of that which had been cast aside continued
uncertain. During the Revolution ultra-democratic reformers very
generally favored the maintenance of a national assembly of but a
single house, and it was not until the promulgation of the
constitution of 1795 that a frame of government including provision
for a legislature of two houses was brought into operation. The
bicameral system of 1795-1799 was succeeded by the anomalous
legislative regime of Napoleon, but under the Constitutional Charter
of 1814 the two-house principle was revived and continuously applied
through a period of thirty-four years. The legislative organ of the
Second Republic was a unicameral assembly, but an incident of the
transition to the Second Empire was the revival of a Senate, and
throughout the reign of Napoleon III. the legislative chambers were
nominally two in number, although it was not until 1870 that the
Senate as a legislative body was made co-ordinate with the _Corps
legislatif_. On the whole, it can be affirmed that at the period when
the constitution of the Third Republic was given form, the political
experience of the nation had demonstrated the bicameral system to be
the most natural, the safest, and the most effective. The opening
stipulation of the Constitutional Law on the Organization of the
Public Powers, adopted February 25, 1875, was that the law-making
power of France should be exercised by a national parliament
consisting of (1) a Chamber of Deputies and (2) a Senate. The one, it
was determined, should rest upon a broadly democratic basis. The other
was planned, as is customary with second chambers, to stand somewhat
further removed from the immediate control of the voters of the
country. But the two were intended to exist fundamentally to enact
into law the will of the people, in whom the sovereignty of the French
nation is clearly lodged. And even the most casual survey of the
French governmental system as it operates to-day will impress the fact
that the structure and organization of the parliamentary body have
lent themselves to the usages of a democratic state in a measure even
exceeding that intended by the founders of the existing order.

*342. The Senate as Originally Established.*--Having determined that the
parliament