Instead of the anomalous hours and seasons of the British Parliament, those of the Belgian Assemblies are in winter, and at mid-day, and its discussions open to the public, with a power invested in any ten members, to demand a vote of the Chamber for the exclusion of strangers during any particular debate. The secretaries at the table, are members of the House, and take share in its proceedings. The number of representatives is regulated by the amount of population, in the proportion of one member for every 40,000 inhabitants; and that of the senate is _one half_ the number of the other House. The latter are chosen for eight years, and the former for four, and the elections take place for the senate every fourth year, when one half retire, and for the commons, every second. The qualification of a senator, is the payment of 1,000 florins a-year of direct taxes, whilst that of a representative is only two hundred, or about £10. The members of the lower House receive each 200 florins a-month, during the sitting of the house; a distinction is conferred on the members of the upper of having neither pay nor perquisites. The ministers have seats in both assemblies, and a right to be heard in their discussions, should they require to speak, but no power to vote in the divisions; either chamber may, also, require their presence and explanations if essential to its deliberations. The _elective_ franchise, I forgot to state, varies in amount in the different provinces, but in all it requires the elector to be twenty-five years of age, and by birth or naturalization, a Belgian. A distinction is also made between the electors of the towns and the peasants of the same province who vote for the same member. Thus, for the province of Antwerp, the elector for the city must pay, as his qualification, eighty florins of direct taxes, annually, whilst the peasant is only required to pay thirty. In Brussels and Ghent, the sum is the same as in Antwerp; in Liege, it is seventy florins; in Bruges, sixty; in Courtrai, fifty; and in Ostend, forty, down to thirty-five for some of the smaller city constituencies. The scale seems to be regulated, throughout, in proportion to the agricultural or commercial reputation of the electoral district; Luxembourg and Namur, for instance, are the lowest in the list, and their peasantry pay but twenty florins, or something less than twenty shillings a-year; whilst in Limbourg, the qualification is twenty-five, and thirty in each of the other six provinces of the kingdom.