Note (Back) — Chapter XIV

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 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 mediæval assemblage of estates, based, in the main, on the tenure of land.[416]