according to the number of members in the council.[474] By the same
law members of families that have reigned in France were declared
ineligible; and by act of July 20, 1895, no one may become a member of
either branch of Parliament unless he has complied with the law
regarding military service.

[Footnote 474: Ibid., I., 310.]

Few of the life members survive to-day. When they shall have
disappeared, the French Senate will comprise a compact body of three
hundred men apportioned among the departments in approximate (p. 317)
accordance with population and chosen in all cases by bodies of
electors all of whom have themselves been elected directly by the
people. The present apportionment gives to the department of the Seine
ten members; to that of the Nord, eight; to others, five four, three,
and two apiece, down to the territory of Belfort and the three
departments of Algeria, and the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe,
Reunion, and the French West Indies, which return one each. From
having long been viewed by republicans with suspicion, the Senate has
come to be regarded by Frenchmen generally as perhaps the most perfect
work of the Republic.[475] In these days its membership is recruited
very largely from the Deputies, so that it includes not only many men
of distinction in letters and science but an unusual proportion of
experienced debaters and parliamentarians. A leading American
authority has said that it is "composed of as impressive a body of men
as can be found in any legislative chamber the world over."[476] The
sittings of the Senate, since 1879, have been held in the Palais du
Luxembourg, a splendid structure on the left bank of the Seine dating
from the early seventeenth century.[477]

[Footnote 475: J. C. Bracq, France under the
Republic (New York, 1910), 8.]

[Footnote 476: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I.,
22. But compare the view set forth in J. S. C.
Bodley, France, 2 vols. (London, 1898), I., 46-60.]

[Footnote 477: O. Pyfferoen, Du senat en France et
dans les Pays-Bas (Brussels, 1892).]

*344. The Chamber of Deputies: Composition.*--The 597 members of the
lower legislative branch are chosen directly by the people, under
conditions regulated by a series of electoral measures, principally
the organic law of November 30, 1875.[478] The fra