584 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



support, but bound to go down with it under popular assault; and 

 finally seats by election, practically always in the indirect form, 

 as partly in the systems of Spain, Hungary, Denmark, and Great 

 Britain, and the exclusive principle in the systems of France, Switzer- 

 land, and the American states. The elective element in the British 

 House of Lords and in the Hungarian Magnaten-Tafel is slight. In 

 the Spanish system one half of the senators are elected, and elected 

 for a term of ten years; and in the Danish system fifty-four of the 

 sixty-six members are elected, and. elected for a term of eight years. 

 These two are headed in the right direction in so far as the senatorial 

 tenure is concerned. 



But in neither of these cases, and in none of the cases where election 

 is the sole source of the tenure, except, of course, the first four 

 already treated of, and, of course, in none of the other cases, is there 

 any approach to the modern democratic principle of distribution in 

 legislative chambers. 



It is about as certain as anything human can be that all the 

 species of senatorial tenure, except that by election, will pass away. 

 It may be expected that the tenure by hereditary right in Great 

 Britain and that by royal appointment in Germany will be the last 

 to yield. But they must all go sooner or later, and it is one of the 

 great problems of constitutional law in all of these states to find the 

 proper and natural substitutes for these antiquated forms or these 

 modern makeshifts. It is also a great problem in those states which 

 have already established the senatorial tenure, in part, by election, so 

 to reform the senatorial electoral bodies as to make them more 

 representative of modern conditions. As I have, said there is no 

 sound objection in modern political theory to the indirect election of 

 senators, but the electoral bodies must be truly representative 

 bodies of the original voters, and they must exercise power in the 

 election proportionate to the population which they represent. This 

 is not the case in any of these. In all of them the original electorate 

 for the senators is much narrower than for the members of the other 

 chamber, and the weight exercised by the different electoral colleges 

 is far from being proportionate to the population of the districts for 

 which they act. 



In the five states with republican governments, the ultimate source 

 of the senatorial tenure is, naturally, the same as that of the member- 

 ship of the other chamber, and in so far as that point is concerned 

 they may be said to have solved this part of the senatorial problem. 

 But when we come to the provisions of these constitutions which relate 

 to the distribution of the senatorial representation, we find ourselves 

 confronted with one of the gravest questions of their constitution law. 



Let us consider briefly the facts in each case, beginning 

 with France, as being a centralized government, and not having, 



