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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legislative body is to be obtained only from the Legislative Manual of
that body.

The vast number of societies, political, literary, scientific,
benevolent and religious, formed all over the land, though not
legislative, are still deliberative in their character, and must have
some system of conducting business, and some rules to govern their
proceedings, and are necessarily subject to the common parliamentary law
where it does not conflict with their own special rules. But as their
knowledge of parliamentary law has been obtained from the usages in this
country, rather than from the customs of Parliament, it has resulted
that these societies have followed the customs of our own legislative
bodies, and our people have thus been educated under a system of
parliamentary law which is peculiar to this country, and yet so well
established as to supersede the English parliamentary law as the common
law of ordinary deliberative assemblies.

The practice of the National House of Representatives should have the
same force in this country as the usages of the House of Commons have in
England, in determining the general principles of the common
parliamentary law of the land; but it does not follow that in every
matter of detail the rules of Congress can be appealed to as the common
law governing every deliberative assembly. In these matters of detail,
the rules of each House of Congress are adapted to their own peculiar
wants, and are of no force whatever in other assemblies.

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But upon all great parliamentary questions, such as what motions can be
made, what is their order of precedence, which can be debated, what is
their effect, etc., the common law of the land is settled by the
practice of the U. S. House of Representatives, and not by that of the
English Parliament, the U. S. Senate, or any other body.

While in extreme cases there is no difficulty in deciding the question
as to whether the practice of Congress determines the common
parliamentary law, yet between these extremes there must necessarily be
a large number of doubtful cases upon which there would be great
difference