LAW AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. PART SIXTH. OF THE FORMS AND METHODS OF PROCEEDING IN LAW AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. PART SIXTH. OF THE FORMS AND METHODS OF PROCEEDING IN FIRST DIVISION. MOTIONS. CHAPTER FIRST. OF MOTIONS IN GENERAL. SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY. 1175. THE judgment or will of any number of persons, considered as an aggregate body, is that which is evidenced by the consent or agreement of the greater number of them. In order to ascertain the existence of this consent or agreement in reference to any particular subject, there are two methods of proceeding, which may be adopted. 1176. The first which is also the simplest and most obvious, consists merely in the several members expressing their individual opinions on the subject before them, one after another, in such 41 manner as they may think proper, and continuing thus to express their various views, until some one opinion or judgment is seen to unite the suffrages of a majority. This mode is sufficient for all the purposes of a small body of men, such as constitutes boards. of directors, trustees, and the like, but is wholly inadequate to the business of an assembly of any considerable magnitude. 1177. The other mode, which is alone practicable in a numerous assembly, consists in the submission of one or more propositions in the form of questions to the assembly, upon which the members express their opinions by a simple negative or affirmative; the proposition thus put to the question being adopted or rejected according as the votes of a majority are given in its favor or against it. In this mode of proceeding, the several propositions may be submitted and put to vote one after another, until some one is agreed to; or they may all, in the first instance, be announced, and then put to vote separately. This method, thus simply stated, however sufficient it might be for the purposes of an assembly convened for a special object, and to sit but for a short time, and with but limited powers, in order to be adequately adapted to the purposes of legislation in modern times, has been expanded into a system of rules by the application and use of which, the judgment of a deliberative assembly, in reference to every topic submitted to it, may, for the most part, be ascertained with precision, promptness, and facility. 1178. According to the system, which has thus become established, some one of the members begins by submitting to the others a proposition, in reference to the subject which he wishes to bring forward, or to that under consideration; this proposition is expressed in such a form of words, that, if assented to by the requisite number, it will purport to express the judgment or will of the assembly; it then forms a basis for the further proceedings of the assembly; and is assented to, rejected, or modified, according as it expresses or not, or may be made to express, the sense of a majority of the members. The different proceedings, which take place, from the first submission of a proposition, through all the changes it may undergo, until the final decision of the assembly upon it, constitute the subject of the rules of debate and proceeding in deliberative assemblies. 1179. In the British parliament, in which the system of parliamentary proceedings has been elaborated and perfected, by the practice of three centuries, many changes in the forms made use of have taken place, which will be pointed out in the course of the work. In reference to the subject now under consideration, the change has been such as is indicated in the preceding paragraphs. 1180. In the earliest periods of the separate existence of the house of commons, as an organized body, the forms of proceeding made use of to ascertain the sense of the house seem to have been nothing more than the propounding of one or more questions for their simple assent or dissent. 1181. In subsequent times, when the commons had assumed more power in the State, and had begun to inquire into and investigate subjects originating with themselves, it became the practice when any topic was introduced, upon which the members expressed their several opinions, for the speaker, at the close of the debate, to frame a question or questions corresponding to the general tenor of the speeches on the one side and on the other, and to put those questions to the vote of the house. 1182. At a later period, this practice became somewhat modified; the speaker still framing the question, but not, in all cases, waiting till the close of the debate. The mode of proceeding is thus stated by Scobell:1 "If the matter moved do receive a debate pro et contra, in that debate none may speak more than once to the matter; and, after some time spent in the debate, the speaker collecting the sense of the house upon the debate, is to reduce the same into a question, which he is to propound: to the end, the house, in their debate afterwards, may be kept to the matter of that question, if the same be approved by the house to contain the substance of the former debate." This mode of proceeding, which prevailed previous to the restoration,2 continued to be used from that period, until it was laid aside, and the present system established, in the time of Mr. Onslow, who was speaker of the commons during the entire period of the reign of George the Second. It was attempted on one occasion, to be revived by Sir Fletcher Norton,3 when first chosen speaker in 1770; and, although no notice was taken of the circumstance, at the time, in consequence of the thinness of the house; it was nevertheless animadverted upon in a subsequent debate, as putting a dangerous power in the chair; and the experiment was not repeated. Though this practice has long been discontinued, traces of it still remain in many of the forms of proceeding. 1183. In consequence of this change of practice, it became an established axiom, that the motion first introduced should be first 1 Scobell, 22. 2 Hatsell, II. 112; Grey, II. 235; Same, III. 165; Same, X. 94, 3 Cav. Deb. I. 458, 473. |