542 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



parliamentary body being out of question, the most natural proceed- 

 ing would consist in submitting these questions to both parliaments; 

 but practical difficulties might arise if their votes should differ; how 

 could two great parliamentary bodies residing in two different 

 countries come to an agreement as quickly as the necessities of imme- 

 diate action may sometimes require? To meet this practical diffi- 

 culty select committees are annually chosen by both parliaments 

 to the number of sixty members each, called delegations, and holding 

 their annual meeting at the call of the Emperor and of the King, alter- 

 nately at Vienna and at Budapest. The delegations don't sit together; 

 they are two separate bodies, like the mother assemblies, only more 

 handy ones to adjust difficulties. In case of disagreement they 

 communicate through written messages, and only when it seems 

 impossible to settle differences through correspondence (a very rare 

 occurrence) do they meet for a simultaneous vote, at which meeting 

 no discussion can take place. What is then the juridical meaning 

 of that simultaneous vote? Is it to get a joint majority out of both 

 bodies? That would contradict the fundamental principle of the 

 institution, which is no sort of common parliament but only a channel 

 of easier communication between the two parliaments; the real 

 meaning of that somewhat anomalous expedient is simply to bring 

 face to face the two dissentient national wills and to make the more 

 fixed one of them prevail w r hen joint action must be secured one way 

 or other. 



The only functions of the delegations are to fix the figures of the 

 budget of both common departments and to bring the controlling 

 power of both parliaments over these departments into direct action. 

 The figures as fixed by them are incorporated into the Austrian and 

 into the Hungarian budgets. The ratifying vote of the Hungarian 

 parliament is an essential condition of legal value to their resolutions, 

 and, though the parliaments cannot alter them, the Hungarian 

 parliament at least has power altogether to reject any decision of 

 the delegations when it thinks that the latter have gone beyond 

 their constitutional competence. It must ever be borne in mind 

 that the delegations are after all but select committees of parliament, 

 committees endowed with some privileges, but still committees con- 

 trolled and kept within their limits by the superior power of the 

 mother assemblies. 



Parliaments, the Hungarian parliament, at least, for the Aus- 

 trian law gives greater power to the Austrian delegation than our 

 law bestows on the Hungarian one, have, as I already hinted, 

 indirect means, besides the direct one, of controlling the common 

 departments. Law and custom desire the administration of com- 

 mon affairs, though intrusted to common ministers, to remain, as 

 to its leading principles, in constant agreement with the Hungarian 



