The Imperial German Constitution adopted at this time was in many ways a remarkable document. It cleverly combined democratic and absolutist features. The democratic features were worked out with a wonderful psychological instinct. In the hands of almost any people except the Germans or Slavs the democratic side of this instrument would have eventually become the predominant one. That it did not is a tribute to the astuteness of Bismarck and of the men who, under his influence, drafted the constitution. The German Parliament or _Reichsrat_ was composed of two houses, the _Bundesrat_, or Federal Council, and the _Reichstag_, or Imperial Diet. The Federal Council was designed as the anchor of absolutism. It was composed of fifty-eight members, of whom seventeen came from Prussia, six from Bavaria, and four each from Saxony and Wuerttemberg. The larger of the other states had two or three each, and seventeen states had but one each. In 1911 three members were granted to Alsace-Lorraine by a constitution given at that time to the _Reichsland_. The members of the Federal Council were the direct representatives of their respective sovereigns, by whom they were designated, and not of the people of the respective states. Naturally they took their instructions from their sovereigns. Nearly all legislative measures except bills for raising revenue had to originate in the Federal Council, and its concurrence with the Reichstag was requisite for the enactment of laws. A further absolutist feature of the constitution was the provision that fourteen votes could block an amendment to the constitution. In other words, Prussia with her seventeen members could prevent any change not desired by her governing class. The Reichstag, the second chamber of the parliament, was a truly democratic institution. Let us say rather that it could have become a democratic institution. Why it did not do so will be discussed later. It consisted of 397 members, who were elected by the most unlimited suffrage prevailing at that time in all Europe. It is but recently, indeed within the last five years, that as universal and free a suffrage has been adopted by other European countries, and there are still many which impose limitations unknown to the German Constitution. Every male subject who had attained the age of twenty-five years and who had not lost his civil rights through the commission of crime, or who was not a delinquent taxpayer or in receipt of aid from the state or his community as a pauper, was entitled to vote. The vote was secret and direct, and the members of the Reichstag were responsible only to their constituents and not subject to instructions from any governmental body or person. They were elected for a term of three years,[3] but their mandates could be terminated at any time by the Kaiser, to whom was reserved the right to dissolve the Reichstag. If he dissolved it, however, he was compelled to order another election within a definitely stated period.