RE-CONSIDERATION.
$When a question has been once made and carried in the affirmative or
negative, it shall be in order for any member of the majority to move
for the re-consideration thereof.--_Rule_ 22.
1798, Jan. A bill on its second reading, being amended, and on the
question, whether it shall be read a third time negatived, was restored
by a decision to re-consider the question. Here the votes of negative
and re-consideration, like positive and negative quantities in equation,
destroy one another, and are as if they were expunged from the journals.
Consequently the bill is open for amendment, just so far as it was the
moment preceding the question for the third reading. That is to say,
all parts of the bill are open for amendment, except those on which
votes have been already taken in its present stage. So also may it be
re-committed.
The rule permitting a re-consideration of a question affixing to it no
limitation of time or circumstance, it may be asked whether there is no
limitation? If, after the vote, the paper on which it has passed has been
parted with, there can be no re-consideration: as if a vote has been for
the passage of a bill, and the bill has been sent to the other House.
But where the paper remains, as on a bill rejected, when, or under what
circumstances, does it cease to be susceptible of re-consideration? This
remains to be settled, unless a sense that the right of re-consideration
is a right to waste the time of the House in repeated agitations of the
same question, so that it shall never know when a question is done with
should induce them to reform this anomalous proceeding.$
In Parliament, a question once carried, cannot be questioned again, at
the same session; but must stand as the judgment of the House.--_Towns._
_col._ 67; _Memor. in Hakew._ 33. And a bill once rejected, another of
the same substance cannot be brought in again the same session.--_Hakew._
158; 6 _Grey_, 392. But this does not extend to prevent putting the same
questions 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 instructions to committees
may be discharged. So a bill begun in one House, 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, and put it off a month, they may offer in
another to the same effect, with the same or a different title.--_Hakew._
97, 98.
Divers 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, &c.,
or to rectify mistakes in an act, &c.; 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 reply.--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_.--2 _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_, 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._ 92. 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 words not in the first, and which might change
the opinions of some members, was brought on again and carried: as
the motives for it were thought to outweigh the objections 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.