The Luxemburg Chamber of Deputies

Why should legislative proceedings in the grand duchy of Luxemburg be given consideration? It is a country with an area less than that of Rhode Island and with a population (260,000) which would barely fill a second class city—a mere atom in the world's history. Nor has it played an heroic part in the great crisis. Here is the excuse. The discussions in the chamber of deputies have reflected, not in their depths but in their shallows, nearly all the phases of the seething unrest which agitates larger nations, and therein lies the reason for offering a few pictures drawn from the official records of the grand ducal chamber— the German reports as they are sent out daily, translated from the proceedings in French, and the final French comptes-rendus. They are miniatures of the processes of readjustment in progress across the Atlantic.The Luxemburg chamber of deputies is a legislative body that has been evolved by a series of still visible leaps and jumps from the simplest feudal conditions to the assembly recently elected by universal adult suffrage on a basis of proportional party representation according to the system of the scrutin de liste. Its modernity is so complete that a Socialist woman has obtained a seat, yet the conservative character of the forbears of the body is not entirely lost to view in the mists of the past.The old duchy of Luxemburg—a countship until raised to higher dignity by an imperial brother of its count (1354)—lost its early independence in the fifteenth century (1441), and thenceforth shared the political lot of the Belgic provinces under Burgundian, Spanish and Austrian rule.