The post would normally have been held by a legatus, of senatorial rank.
After a great inquiry held in 1892 by a senatorial committee a reaction was produced in France against this excessive assimilation.
Although, with the exception of Seward, he was the most prominent Republican in the country, and had done more against slavery than any other Republican, he failed to secure the nomination for the presidency in 1860, partly because his views on the question of protection were not orthodox from a Republican point of view, and partly because the old line Whig element could not forgive his coalition with the Democrats in the senatorial campaign of 1849; his uncompromising and conspicuous anti-slavery record, too, was against him from the point of view of "availability."
The senatorial recommendation of jhe necessary number of candidates seems to have been merely ratified in the comitia; and a Spanish municipal law of the 1st century makes special provision for occasions on which an insufficient number of candidates are forthcoming.
Its approval is necessary to any important action, and in general the president finds it advisable to keep the leaders of the senatorial majority, and in particular the Senate committee on foreign relations, informed of pending negotiations.