Legal Rights of Deliberative Assemblies ............................ 158
Table of Rules Relating to Motions ................................. 166
Index .............................................................. 169

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INTRODUCTION.

Parliamentary Law.

Parliamentary Law refers originally to the customs and rules of
conducting business in the English Parliament; and thence to the customs
and rules of our own legislative assemblies. In England these customs
and usages of Parliament form a part of the unwritten law of the land,
and in our own legislative bodies they are of authority in all cases
where they do not conflict with existing rules or precedents.

But as a people we have not the respect which the English have for
customs and precedents, and are always ready for innovations which we
think are improvements, and hence changes have been and are being
constantly made in the written rules which our legislative bodies have
found best to adopt. As each house adopts its own rules, it results
that the two houses of the same legislature do not always agree in their
practice; even in Congress the order of precedence of motions is not
the same in both houses, and the Previous Question is admitted in the
House of Representatives, but not in the Senate. As a consequence of
this, the exact method of conducting business in any particular

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