[The Constitution, however, has directed that "the yeas and nays of the members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal." And, again, that in all cases of reconsidering a bill disapproved by the president, and returned with his objections, "the votes of both houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journals of each house respectively."]

[By the 16th and 17th rules of the senate, when the yeas and nays shall be called for by one-fifth of the members present, each member called upon shall, unless for special reasons he be excused by the senate, declare openly and without debate, his assent or dissent to the question. In taking the yeas and nays, and upon the call of the house, the names of the members shall be taken alphabetically.]

[When the yeas and nays shall be taken upon any question in pursuance of the above rule, no member shall be permitted, under any circumstances whatever, to vote after the decision is announced from the chair.]

[When it is proposed to take the vote by yeas and nays, the president or speaker states that "the question is whether, e. g., the bill shall pass that it is proposed that the yeas and nays shall be entered on the journal. Those, therefore, who desire it, will rise.” If he finds and declares that one-fifth have risen, he then states that "those who are of the opinion that the bill shall pass are to answer in the affirmative; those of a contrary opinion in the negative." The clerk then calls over the names alphabetically, notes the yea or nay of each, and gives the list to the president or speaker, who declares the result. In the senate, if there be an equal division, the secretary calls on the vice president and notes his affirmative or negative, which becomes the decision of the house.] In the house of commons every member must give his vote the one way or the other (Scob. 24), as it is not permitted to anyone to withdraw who is in the house when the question is put, nor is anyone to be told in the division who was not in when the question was put. 2 Hats. 140.

This last position is always true when the vote is by yeas and nays; where the negative as well as affirmative of the question is stated by the president at the same time, and the vote of both sides begins and proceeds pari passu. It is true also when the question is put in the usual way, if the negative has also been put; but if it has not, the member entering or any other member, may speak, and even propose amendments, by which debate may be opened again, and the question be greatly deferred. And as some who have answered aye may have been changed by the new arguments, the affirmative must be put over again. If, then, the member entering may, by speaking a few words, occasion a repetition of a question, i would be useless to deny it on his simple call for it. While the house is telling, no member may speak or move out of his place, for if any mistake be suspected it must be told again. Mem. in Hakew. 26; 2 Hats. 143.

If any difficulty arises in point of order during the division, the speaker is to decide peremptorily, subject to the future censure of the house if irregular. He sometimes permits old experienced members to assist him with their advice, which they do sitting in their seats covered, to avoid the appearance of debate; but this can only be with the speaker's leave, else the division might last several hours. 2 Hats. 143.

The voice of the majority decides; for the lex majoris partis is the law of all councils, elections, etc., where not otherwise expressly provided. Hakew. 93. But if the house be equally divided, "semper presumatur pro negante;" that is, the former law is not to be changed but by a majority. Towns. col. 134.

[But in the senate of the United States, the vice president decides when the house is divided. Const. U. S. I. 3.]

When from counting the house on a division, it appears that there is not a quorum, the matter continues exactly in the state in which it was before the division, and must be resumed at that point on any future day. 2 Hats. 126. 1606, May 1st, on a question whether a member having said yea may afterwards sit and change his opinion, a precedent was remembered by the speaker, of Mr. Morris, attorney of the wards, in 39 Eliz., who in like case changed his opinion. Mem. Hakew. 27.

SECTION XLII.

TITLES.

After the bill has passed, and not before, the title may be amended, and is to be fixed by a question; and the bill is then sent to the other house.

SECTION XLIII.

RECONSIDERATION.

[When a question has been once made and carried in the affimative or negative, it shall be in order for any member of the majority to move for the reconsideration thereof; but no motion for the reconsideration of any vote shall be in order after a bill, resolution, message, report, amendment or motion upon which the vote was taken shall have gone out of the possession of the senate announcing their decision; nor shall any motion for reconsideration be in order unless made on the same day on which the vote was taken, or within the two next days of the actual session of the senate thereafter.* Rule 20.]

[1798, Jan. A bill on its second reading being amended and on the question whether it shall be read a third time negatived, was restored by a decision to reconsider that question. Here the votes of negative and reconsideration, like positive and negative quantities in an equation, destroy one another, and are as if they were expunged from the journal. Consequently the bill is open for amendment, just so far as it was the moment preceding the question for the third reading; that is to say, all parts of the bill are open for amendment except those on which votes have been already taken in its present stage. So, also, it may be recommitted.]

[†The rule permitting a reconsideration of a question affixing it to no limitation of time or circumstance, it may be asked whether there is no limitation? If, after the vote, the paper on which it is passed has been parted with, there can be no reconsideration; as if a vote has been for the passage of a bill, and the bill has been sent to the other house. But where the paper

*This part of the rule has been added since the Manual was compiled. †This rule now fixes the limitation.

remains, as on a bill rejected, when, or under what circumstances does it cease to be susceptible of reconsideration? This remains to be settled; unless, a sense of that the right of reconsideration is a right to waste the time of the house in repeated agitations of the same question, so that it shall never know when a question is done with, should induce them to reform this anomalous proceeding.]

In Parliament, a question once carried can not be questioned again at the same session, but must stand as the judgment of the house. Towns. col. 67; Mem. in Hakew. 33. And a bill once rejected, another of the same substance can not be brought in again the same session. Hakew. 158; 6 Grey, 392. But this does not extend to prevent putting in the same question in different stages of a bill; because every stage of a bill submits the whole and every part of it to the opinion of the house, as open for amendment, either by insertion or omission, though the same amendment has been accepted or rejected in a former stage. So in reports of committees, e. g., report of an address, the same question is before the house, and open for free discussion. Towns. col. 26; 2 Hats. 98, 100, 101. So orders of the house, or instruction to committee, may be discharged. So a bill, begun in one house, and sent to the other, and there rejected, may be renewed again in that other, passed and sent back. Ib. 92; 3 Hats. 161. Or if instead of being rejected, they read it once and lay it aside, or amend it, and put it off a month, they may order in another to the same effect, with the same or different title. Hakew. 97, 98.

Diverse expedients are used to correct the effects of this rule; as by passing an explanatory act, if anything has been omitted or ill expressed (3 Hats. 278), or an act to enforce, and make more effectual an act, etc., or to rectify mistakes in act, etc., or a committee on one bill may be instructed to receive a clause to rectify the mistakes of another. Thus, June 24, 1685, a clause was inserted in a bill for rectifying a mistake committed by a clerk in engrossing a bill of supply. 2 Hats. 194, 6. Or the session may be closed for one, two, three or more days, and a new one commenced. But then all matters depending must be finished, or they fall, and are to begin de novo. 3 Hats. 94, 98. Or a part of the subject may be taken up by another bill, or taken up in a different way. 6 Grey, 304, 316.

And in cases of the last magnitude, this rule has not been so strictly and verbally observed as to stop indispensable proceedings altogether. 2 Hats. 22, 98. Thus when the address on the preliminaries of peace in 1782 had been lost by a majority of one, on account of the importance of the question, and smallness of the majority, the same question in substance, though with some words not in the first, and which might change the opinion of some members, was brought on again and carried, as the motives for it were thought to outweigh the objection of form. 2 Hats. 99, 100.

A second bill may be passed to continue an act of the same session, or to enlarge the time limited for its execution. 2 Hats. 95, 98. This is not in contradiction to the first act.

SECTION XLIV.

BILLS SENT TO THE OTHER HOUSE.

[All bills passed in the senate shall, before they are sent to the house of representatives, be examined by a committee, consisting of three members,

whose duty shall be to examine all bills, amendments, resolutions, or motions, before they go out of possession of the senate, and to make report that they are correctly engrossed; which report shall be entered on the journal. Rule 33.]

A bill from the other house is sometimes ordered to lie on the table. 2 Hats. 97.

When bills, passed in one house and sent to the other, are grounded on special facts requiring proof, it is usual, either by message or at a conference, to ask the grounds and evidence; and this evidence, whether arising out of papers, or from the examination of witnesses, is immediately communicated. 3 Hats. 48.

SECTION XLV.

AMENDMENTS BETWEEN THE HOUSES.

When either house, e. g., the house of commons, sends a bill to the other, the other may pass it with amendments. The regular progression in this case is, that the commons disagree to the amendment; the lords insist on it; the commons insist on their disagreement; the lords adhere to their amendment; the commons adhere to their disagreement. The term of insisting may be repeated as often as they choose to keep the question open. But the first adherence by either renders it necessary for the other to recede or adhere also; when the matter is usually suffered to fall. 10 Grey, 148. Latterly, however, there are instances of their having gone to a second adherence. There must be an absolute conclusion of the subject somewhere, or otherwise transactions between the houses would become endless. 3 Hats. 268, 270. The term of insisting, we are told by Sir John Trever, was then (1679) newly introduced into parliamentary usage by the lords. 7 Grey, 94. It was certainly a happy innovation, as it multiplies the opportunities of trying modifications which may bring the houses to concurrence. Either house, however, is free to pass over the term of insisting, and to adhere in the first instance; 10 Grey, 146; but it is not respectful to the other. In the ordinary parliamentary course, there are two free conferences, at least, before an adherence. 10 Grey, 147.

Either house may recede from its amendment, and agree to the bill; or recede from their disagreement to the amendment, and agree to the same absolutely, or with an amendment; for here the disagreement and receding destroy one another, and the subject stands as before the disagreement. Elsynge, 23, 27; 9 Grey, 476.

But the house can not recede from, or insist on its own amendment, with an amendment, for the same reason that it can not send to the other house an amendment to its own act after it has passed the act. They may modify an amendment from the other house by ingrafting an amendment on it, because they have never assented to it; but they can not amend their own amendment, because they have, on the question, passed it in that form. 9 Grey, 363; 10 Grey, 240. In the senate, March 29, 1798. Nor where one house has adhered to their amendment, and the other agrees with an amendment, can the first house depart from the form which they have fixed by an adherence.

In the case of a money bill, the lords' proposed amendments become, by delay, confessedly necessary. The commons, however, refused them, as infringing on

their privileges as to money bills; but they offered themselves to add to the bill a proviso to the same effect, which had no coherence with the lords' amendments; and urged that it was an expedient warranted by precedent, and not unparliamentary in a case become impracticable, and irremediable in any other way. 3 Hats. 256, 266, 270, 271. But the lords refused, and the bill was lost. 1 Chand. 288. A like case, 1 Chand. 311. So the commous resolved that it was unparliamentary to strike out, at a conference, anything in a bill which had been agreed and passed by both houses. 6 Grey, 274; 1 Chand. 312.

A motion to amend an amendment from the other house takes precedence of a motion to agree or disagree.

A bill originating in one house is passed ay the other with an amendment. The originating house agrees to their amendment with an amendment. The other may agree to their amendment with an amendment, that being only in the 2d and not the 3d degree; for, as the amending house, the first amendment with which they passed the bill is a part of its text; it is the only text they have agreed to. The amendment to that text by the originating house, therefore, is only in the 1st degree, and the amendment to that again by the amending house is only in the 2d, to-wit: an amendment to an amendment, and so admissible. Just so, when on a bill from the originating house, the other, at its second reading makes an amendment; on the third reading this amendment is become the text of the bill, and if an amendment to it be moved, an amendment to that amendment may also be moved, as being only in the 2d degree.

SECTION XLVI.

CONFERENCES.

It is on the question of amendments between the houses that conferences are usually asked; but they may be asked in all cases of difference of opinion between the two houses on matters pending between them. The request of a conference, however, must always be with the house which is possessed of the papers. 3 Hats. 31; 1 Grey, 425.

3

Conferences may be either simple or free. At a conference simply, written reasons are prepared by the house asking it, and they are read and delivered, without debate, to the managers of the other house at the conference; but are not then to be answered; 4 Grey, 144. The other house, then, if satisfied, vote the reason satisfactory, or say nothing; if not satisfied, they resolve them not satisfactory, and ask a conference on the subject of the last conference, where they read and deliver, in like manner, written answers to those reasons. Grey, 183. They are meant chiefly to record the jurisdiction of each house to the nation at large, and to posterity, and in proof that the miscarriage of a necessary measure is not imputable to them. 3 Grey, 255. At free conferences the managers discuss, viva voce and freely, and interchange propositions for such modifications as may be made in a parliamentary way, and may bring the sense of the two houses together. And each party reports in writing to their respective houses the substance of what is said on both sides, and it is entered in their journals. 9 Grey, 220; 3 Hats. 280. This report can not be amended or altered as that of a committee may be. Journal of Senate, May 24, 1796.

A conference may be asked, before the house asking it has come to a resolution of disagreement, insisting or adhering. 3 Hats. 269, 341. In which case