Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/256

226 104. The members of the Executive Directory who may retard or refuse to seal, promulgate, and dispatch the decree of transfer of the legislative body are guilty of the same offence.

105. If, within the twenty days after that fixed by the Council of Ancients, the majority of each of the two councils have not made known to the Republic their arrival at the new place indicated or their meeting in some other place, the department administrators, or in their default, the department civil tribunals, convoke the primary assemblies in order to select the electors who proceed forthwith to the formation of a new legislative body by the election of two hundred and fifty deputies for the Council of Ancients and five hundred for the other council.

106. The department administrators, who, in the case of the preceding article may be remiss in convoking the primary assemblies, make themselves guilty of high treason and of an attempt against the security of the Republic.

107. All citizens who interpose obstacles to the convocation of the primary and electoral assemblies in the case of article 106 are guilty of the same offence.

108. The members of the new legislative body assemble in the place to which the Council of Ancients had transferred its sittings.

If they cannot meet in that place, in whatever place there is a majority there is the legislative body.

109. Except in the case of article 102 no proposition of law can originate in the Council of Ancients.

Of the Guaranty of the Members of the Legislative Body.

110. The citizens who are or have been members of the legislative body cannot be questioned, accused, or tried at any time for what they have said or written in the discharge of their functions.

111. The members of the legislative body, from the moment of their selection to the thirtieth day after the expiration of their functions, cannot be put on trial except in the forms prescribed by the articles that follow.

112. For criminal acts they can be seized in the very act; but notice thereof is given without delay to the legislative body and the prosecution shall be continued only after the