Note (Back) — Chapter XXXIII

681. The Senate: Composition.—The legislative powers of the kingdom are vested in "the Cortes, together with the king." The Cortes consists of two co-ordinate chambers, the Senate and the Congress of Deputies. In the composition of the Senate the prescriptive, appointive, and elective principles are curiously intertwined, the chamber containing one group of men who are members in their own right, another who are appointed by the crown and sit for life, and a third who are elected by the corporations of the state and by the large taxpayers. In number the first two categories jointly may not exceed 180; the third is fixed definitely at that figure. In point of fact the life senators nominated by the crown number 100, while the quota of prescriptive members varies considerably. This last-mentioned group comprises grown sons of the sovereign and of the heir-presumptive; the admirals of the navy and the captains-general of the army; the patriarch of the Indies and the archbishops; the presidents of the Council of State, the Supreme Court, the Court of Accounts, and the Supreme Councils of War and Marine, after two years of service; and grandees of Spain[854] in their own right, who are not subjects of another power and who have a proved yearly income of 60,000 pesetas ($12,000) derived from real property of their own, or from rights legally equivalent to real property.[855]