elected for three years by an indirect and complicated system which is
nearly the reverse of our own. The voters of each parish, which forms
an election district, assemble at a given place and time and select
delegates to a convention which chooses their representatives in the
storthing, and, when the storthing meets, its one hundred and fourteen
members select one-fourth of their own members, generally the most
experienced and distinguished men, to constitute a senate, or upper
chamber, called the lagthing, which exercises a sort of supervisory
power over legislation.

The storthing sits for about six months every year. The members are
paid $3 a day during the session and their traveling expenses. The
presiding officer is chosen every four weeks, and can not succeed
himself without an interval. The committees are appointed by a
"selection committee" elected by ballot, and each committee chooses
his own chairman. There is a rather novel rule requiring bills
referred to committees to be assigned for consideration to the several
members in rotation. Any member may introduce a bill modifying the
constitution, but all other classes or measures must proceed from the
government and the members of the lower house. Members of the upper
house, or lagthing, are not permitted to propose ordinary legislation,
on the theory that they should remain unprejudiced so as to exercise
a judicial revision. Thus, bills must originate in the odelsthing,
which, having passed them, sends them to the lagthing for its
approval.

The financial officers of the government and the directors of the
national bank are elected by the storthing, which appoints a committee
every six months to revise and audit the accounts of officials who
have to do with the disbursement or collection of money. When an