Counsel are to be heard only on private, not on public bills; and on such points of law only as the House shall direct.—19 Grey, 61.
SECTION XIV.
ARRANGEMENT OF BUSINESS.
The Speaker is not precisely bound to any rules as to what bills or other matter shall be first taken up, but is left to his own discretion, unless the House on a question decide to take up a particular subject.—Hakew. 136.
A settled order of business is, however, necessary for the government of the presiding person, and to restrain individual members from calling up favorite measures, or matters under their special patronage, out of their just turn. It is useful also for directing the discretion of the House, when they are moved to take up a particular matter, to the prejudice of others having a priority of right to their attention in the general order of business.
In Senate, the bills and other papers which are in possession of the House, and in a state to be acted upon, are arranged every morning, and brought on in the following order:
1. Bills ready for a second reading are read, that they may be referred to committees, and so be put under way. But if, on their being read, no motion is made for commitment, they are then laid on the table in the general file, to be taken up in their just turn.
2. After twelve o'clock, bills ready for it are put on their passage.
3. Reports in possession of the House which offer grounds for a bill, are to be taken up, that the bill may be ordered in.
4. Bills or other matters before the House, and unfinished on the preceding day, whether taken up in turn, or on special order, are entitled to be resumed and passed on through their present stage.
5. These matters being despatched, for preparing and expediting business, the general file of bills and other papers is then taken up, and each article of it is brought on according to its seniority, reckoned by the date of its first introduction to the House. Reports on bills belong to the dates of their bills.