Note (Back) — Chapter XVI

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 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, Réunion, 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]