LAW AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. PART SEVENTH. OF COMMITTEES AND THEIR FUNCTIONS. 1850. COMMITTEES form a most important, and, in modern times, an indispensable, part of the machinery of parliamentary procedure. They are of three kinds, namely, select committees, consisting of a small number of members specially named, committees of the whole, consisting of all the members of the house, and joint committees which are composed of members of each house sitting and acting together. 1851. Select committees are appointed for a great variety of purposes, which it would be impossible to enumerate in detail; but, which may be all embraced under the three general heads of obtaining information for the use of the house, as to matters-of-fact; of performing acts required by the house to be done; and of forming and expressing opinions on matters referred to their consideration. In other words, the functions of select committees, -as of the house itself, are to inquire, to think, and to act. By means of committees of this description, a legislative body consisting of many members is enabled to do many things, which, from its numbers, it would otherwise be unable to do; to accomplish a much 1 Committees are sometimes said to be the eyes and ears of the house: for certain pur61 poses, also, they are its head and hands. (721) + greater quantity of business, by distributing it among the members, than could possibly be effected, if the whole body were obliged to devote itself to each particular subject; and to proceed, in the preliminary stages of a measure, with that degree of freedom, which is essential to its being properly matured. 1852. Committees of the whole house, being composed of all the members, possess none of the advantages which result from the employment of a small number of persons, selected with express reference to the particular purpose in view; and, at the present day, the principal advantage, which appears to result from the consideration of a subject in a committee of the whole house, rather than in the house itself, consists in the liberty which every member enjoys in such a committee of speaking more than once to the same question. 1853. Select committees, and committees of the whole, though in many respects governed by the same rules of proceeding, yet differ from one another in so many essential particulars, that it will be necessary to consider them separately. Joint committees, though presenting very little that is peculiar, will constitute the matter of a distinct division of this part. LAW AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. PART SEVENTH. OF COMMITTEES AND THEIR FUNCTIONS. FIRST DIVISION. SELECT COMMITTEES. 1854. The subject of this division is considered in the eight following chapters: I. Of the different kinds of select committees; II. Of their appointment; III. Of their power and authority; IV. Of their forms of proceeding; V. Of instructions to committees; VI. Of the intermediate proceedings in the house between the appointment of the committee, and previous to its report; VII. Of the report; VIII. Of making the report and of proceedings thereon. (723) |