582 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



the Middle Ages. I think it may be broadly affirmed that of the 

 seventeen states of the civilized world worthy of mention as having 

 a constitutional law, only four of them have solved the problem of 

 the upper legislative chamber with anything like a fulfillment of the 

 demands of modern theory or modern conditions, and these four 

 are not states of the first rank in power. They are Sweden, Norway, 

 the Netherlands, and Belgium. Moreover these four are all states 

 with centralized governments, that is, states which are better situ- 

 ated than those having federal governments for the solving of this 

 problem. Of these four, Sweden has come nearest, in my judgment, 

 to the ideal modern solution, providing, in its constitution, for the 

 election of the senators by the provincial assemblies and the muni- 

 cipal assemblies of such cities as are not under provincial government, 

 all of which bodies are elected by the voters, and distributing the 

 representation in the Senate according to population. This is both 

 conservative and democratic, conservative in the method of the 

 election, and democratic in the method of the distribution of the 

 representation. In the Swedish legislature there is also absolute 

 parity of powers between the two houses, both in the initiation and 

 passage of legislation. Both houses come ultimately from the 

 people, both represent the whole people, both rest upon the same 

 principle of distribution of seats, viz., population, and both exercise 

 the same power in legislation, fulfilling thus the four chief require- 

 ments for the Senate of a modern state. 



Apparently the Norwegian Senate approaches as near the solution 

 of the modern problem as the Swedish. But a little consideration of 

 the details will show that this is not quite true. The Norwegians 

 elect all of their legislators as one body; and when they all assemble 

 as one body, the separation into two bodies is effected by drawing 

 lots, one fourth of the whole number constituting in this manner the 

 Senate, and three fourths the other chamber. The main defect in 

 this method of organizing a Senate consists in the fact that the 

 Senate will be composed entirely of members coming from parlia- 

 mentary districts not represented at all in the other, chamber, and 

 vice versa; that is, three fourths of the parliamentary districts are 

 entirely represented in one chamber and one fourth in the other. 

 This tends to the sectionalizing of views and to the weakening of 

 the national consciousness and spirit, or, at least, to the hindering 

 of the development of the national consciousness and spirit. Then 

 there is another defect. The one fourth selected in this way and 

 representing directly only one fourth of the parliamentary districts 

 cannot maintain a parity of power with the other chamber composed 

 of members directly representing three fourths of these districts. 

 This is manifest in the provision of the constitution itself respecting 

 the mode of legislation. If the two chambers cannot agree upon 



