chapter iv.: of the legislative power.

Art. 20. The French people delegate the legislative power to one sole assembly.

Art. 21. The total number of representatives of the people shall be 750, including the representatives from Algeria and the French colonies.

Art. 22. This number shall be increased to 900 for assemblies called together to revise the constitution.

Art. 23. Population is the basis for election.

Art. 24. Suffrage is direct and universal. The act of voting is by secret ballot.

Art. 25. All Frenchmen aged twenty-one, and in the enjoyment of their civil and political rights, are electors, without property qualifications of any kind.

Art. 26. All electors are eligible to be elected without reference to property qualifications or to place of abode, who are twenty-five years of age.

Art. 27. The electoral law will determine the causes which may deprive a French citizen of the right of electing or being elected. It will designate those citizens who, exercising or after having exercised official functions in a department or territory, cannot be elected there.

Art. 28. The holding of any remunerating public office is incompatible with the trust of a representative of the people. No member of the national assembly can be nominated or raised to public offices, receiving salary, the appointment to which is in the gift of the executive, during the continuance of the legislature. Exceptions to the regulations contained in the two preceding paragraphs are to be settled by the organic electoral law.

Art. 29. The conditions of the preceding articles are not applicable to assemblies elected for the revision of the constitution.

Art. 30. The elections for representatives shall be by departments, and by ballot. The electors shall vote at the chief place of their district; nevertheless the district may be, from local causes, divided into several subdivisions, under the forms and in conformity with the conditions to be determined by the electoral law.

Art. 31. The national assembly is elected for the period of three years, to be then wholly renewed. Forty-five days at least before the term of the legislature, a law shall be passed to fix the period of the new elections. If no law is passed within the time prescribed by the preceding paragraph, the electors shall have full right to assemble and vote on the thirtieth day preceding the close of the legislature. The new assembly is convoked by full right for the day following that on which the trust of the preceding assembly expires.

Art. 32. The assembly is permanent; nevertheless it may adjourn to any period which it shall determine. During the continuance of the prorogation, a commission, composed of members of committees, and twenty-five representatives appointed by the assembly, by ballot, having an absolute majority, will have the right to convoke the assembly, in cases of emergency. The president of the republic has also the right to convoke the assembly. The national assembly will determine the place where it shall hold its sessions, and will direct the number and description of the military forces which shall be appointed for its security, and have them at its order.

Art. 33. Representatives may be re-elected.

Art. 34. The members of the national assembly are the representatives, not of the department which nominates them, but of the whole of France.

Art. 35. They cannot receive imperative instructions.

Art. 36. The persons of the representatives of the people are inviolable. They cannot be pursued, accused, nor condemned, at any time, for opinions uttered within the assembly.

Art. 37. They cannot be arrested for criminal offences, excepting when taken in the very fact, nor prosecuted, until after permission granted for such purpose by the assembly. In case of an arrest in the very fact, the matter shall immediately be referred to the assembly, which shall authorize or refuse the continuation of the prosecution. The above regulation to apply also to the case of citizens imprisoned at the time of being named representatives.

Art. 38. Every representative of the people is to receive a remuneration, which he is not at liberty to renounce.

Art. 39. The sittings of the assembly are to be public. Nevertheless, the assembly may form itself into a secret committee, on the requisition of a number of representatives, as settled by the rules. Each representative has the right of initiating parliamentary measures, which he will do according to the forms determined by the regulations.

Art. 40. The presence of half the members, and also one over, is necessary to vote on any law.

Art. 41. No bill (except in cases of urgency) shall be passed till after it has undergone three readings, at intervals of not less than five days between each reading.

Art. 42. Every proposition, the object of which is to declare the urgency of a measure, must be preceded by an explanation of motives. If the assembly is of opinion to accede to the proposition, it will fix the time when the report upon the necessity of the case shall be represented. On this report, if the assembly admit the urgency of the case, it will declare it, and fix the time of the debate. If it decides against the urgency of the case, the motion will have to go through the usual course.