ny at one time as one hundred
and nineteen. Always its constitution has been miscellaneous. At no time
were these invitations issued with an admission that they recognised a
right. The old institution or monarchy had come out unexpectedly well in
the light of the new regime. Nine of the original members of the
first government were crowned heads who had resigned their separate
sovereignty, and at no time afterwards did the number of its royal
members sink below six. In their case there was perhaps a kind of
attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the still more
infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ax-presidents of republics, no
member of the council had even the shade of a right to his participation
in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its opponents should find
a common ground in a clamour for representative government, and build
high hopes upon a return, to parliamentary institutions.

The council decided to give them everything they wanted, but in a
form that suited ill with their aspirations. It became at one stroke a
representative body. It became, indeed, magnificently representative. It
became so representative that the politicians were drowned in a deluge
of votes. Every adult of either sex from pole to pole was given a vote,
and the world was divided into ten constituencies, which voted on the
same day by means of a simple modification of the world post. Membership
of the government, it was decided, must be for life, save in the
exceptional case of a recall; but the elections, which were held
quinquenially, were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion. The
method of proportional representation with one transferable vote was
adopted, and the voter might also write upon his voting paper in a
specially marked space, the name of any of his representatives that he
wished to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many votes as the quota
by which he had been elected, and the original members by as many votes
in any constituency as the returning quotas in the first election.

Upon these conditions the council submitted itself very cheerfully to
the suffrages of the world. None of its members were recalled, and its
fifty new associates, which included twenty-seven which it had seen fit
to recommend, were of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to disturb
the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom from rules or formalities
prevented any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the two newly