RECONSIDERATION.
[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 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, January. 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.]
[[45]The rule permitting a reconsideration 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 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 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 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 cannot 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 cannot be brought in again the same session.
_Hakew._, 158; 6 _Grey_, 392. But this does not extend to prevent
putting 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
instructions 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 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, 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._, 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 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.