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MANUAL

OF

PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE.

EXTRACT FROM THE RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES.

The rules of parliamentary practice comprised in Jefferson's Manual shall govern the House in all cases to which they are applicable, and in which they are not inconsistent with the standing rules and orders of the House and the joint rules of the Senate and House of Representatives.-(Adopted September 15, 1837.)

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PREFACE.

The Constitution of the United States, establishing a legislature for the Union under certain forms, authorizes each branch of it "to determine the rules of its own proceedings." The Senate have accordingly formed some rules for its own government; but these going only to few cases, they have referred to the decision of their President, without debate and without appeal, all questions of order arising either under their own rules, or where they have provided none. This places under the discretion of the President a very extensive field of decision, and one which, irregularly exercised, would have a powerful effect upon the proceedings and determinations of the House. The President must feel, weightily and seriously, this confidence in his discretion, and the neces sity of recurring, for its government, to some known system of rules, that he may neither leave himself free to indulge caprice or passion, nor open to the imputation of them. But to what system of rules is he to recur, as supplementary to those of the Senate? To this there can be but one answer. To the sytem of regulations adopted for the govern ment of some one of the parliamentary bodies within these States, or of that which has served as a prototype to most of them. This last is the model which we have all studied, while we are little acquainted with the modifications of it in our several States. It is deposited, too, in publications possessed by many, and open to all. Its rules are probably as wisely constructed for governing the debates of a considerative body, and obtaining its true sense, as any which can become known to us; and the acquiescence of the Senate, hitherto, under the references to them, has given them the sanction of their approbation.

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