EXTRACT FROM THE RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESEN TATIVES 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 Sept. 15th 1837,) 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 on the proceedings and determinations of the House. The President must feel, weightily and seriously this confidence in his discretion; and the necessity 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 system of regulations adopted for the government 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, |