Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/247

Rh acquired only by residence for one year and is lost only by a year of absence.

18. No one can act by proxy in the primary assemblies or vote upon the same matter in more than one of these assemblies.

19. There is at least one primary assembly per canton.

When there are several of them, each is composed of four hundred citizens at least, of nine hundred at most.

These numbers include the citizens, present or absent, having the right to vote there.

20. The primary assemblies constitute themselves provisionally under the presidency of the most aged; the youngest discharges provisionally the duties of secretary.

21. They are definitely constituted through the selection by ballot of a president, secretary, and three tellers.

22. If difficulties arise over the qualifications requisite for voting, the assembly decides provisionally, reserving recourse to the civil tribunal of the department.

23. In every other case the legislative body alone pronounces upon the validity of the operations of the primary assemblies.

24. No one can appear in arms in the primary assemblies.

25. Their policing belongs to themselves.

26. The primary assemblies meet:

In order to accept or reject changes in the constitutional act proposed by the assemblies of revision;

To conduct the elections which belong to them according to the constitutional act.

27. They meet with perfect right upon 1 Germinal of each year and proceed, according as there is occasion, to the selection:

Of the members of the electoral assembly;

The justice of the peace and his assessors;

The president of the municipal administration of the canton, or the municipal officers in the communes of above five thousand inhabitants.

28. Immediately after these elections, in the communes of under five thousand inhabitants, the communal assemblies are held, which elect the agents of each commune and their assistants.