Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/303

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Constitution of the Year VIII
273

expiration of their duties, can take seats in the Senate, but they are not required to make use of this right.

They do not have it if they leave their consular duties by resignation.

18. A senator is forever ineligible to any other public office.

19. All the lists made in the departments, in virtue of article 9, are despatched to the Senate: they constitute the national list.

20. It chooses from this list the legislators, the tribunes, the consuls, the judges of cassation, and the commissioners of accounts.

21. It sustains or annuls all the acts which are referred to it as unconstitutional by the Tribunate or the government: the lists of eligibles are included among these acts.

22. Fixed revenues from the national domains are set apart for the expenses of the Senate. The annual stipend of each of its members is taken from these revenues, and is equal to a twentieth of that of the First Consul.

23. The sittings of the Senate are not public.

24. Citizens Siéyès and Roger-Ducos, retiring consuls, are appointed members of the Conservative Senate: they shall join to themselves the second and third consuls appointed by the present constitution. These four citizens appoint the majority of the Senate, which then completes itself and proceeds to the elections that are entrusted to it.

Title III. Of the Legislative Power.

25. New laws shall be promulgated only when the project for them shall have been proposed by the government, communicated to the Tribunate, and decreed by the Legislative Body.

26. The projects that the government proposes are drawn up in articles. In any stage of the discussion of these proposals, the government can withdraw them; it can reproduce them in modified form.

27. The Tribunate is composed of one hundred members, at least twenty-five years of age; they are renewed by a fifth each year and are indefinitely re-eligible as long as they remain upon the national list.