achieved success outside politics, and being in consequence induced to enter the House of Commons, did not soon regret the political venture he had made. When asked for the reason, he replied: "The procedure and intolerable waste of time under it."" Note one instance of the possibilities in the House of Commons, as averred by Hamilton (p. 210): "On money bills, independent of the unlimited power of speaking in Committee, every member has the power of making, if he chooses, on seven different occasions, the same speech over and over again. On ordinary bills a lesser but similar verbosity can be exercised. The brazenfaced advertiser, of whom there is always a number in each Parliament, soon finds out that the House of Commons is the best advertising-board in the world." Whatever our sins of license, at any rate nothing like this is permissible in Congress, nor so far as I know in any of our Legislatures. So we may get what consolation we can from the knowledge that our assemblies are not the most time-wasting in the world. Yet that they are woefully prodigal of precious hours is beyond dispute.

A great member of Parliament once said: "The time of the House of Commons is the treasure of the people." So it is with Congress and every Legislature. To protect and preserve that treasure is no trivial concern, but well worth serious study and earnest effort.

CHAPTER II

THE QUORUM

WHEN justices of the peace were appointed in each county of England, the commission specified some of those named, or one of them, without whose presence no business could be done. The direction for this, in Latin, began with the word "quorum"

"of whom❞—and the word came to be used to express in brief the idea of a certain necessary attendance. Very little is known as to how or when this idea was formulated. We find the Commons petitioning in 1397 that because certain peers and bishops were absent, Parliament should be adjourned whilst they were sent for, but this was probably no more than recognition of the propriety of having on hand all the parties to a bargain. Many centuries earlier the dangers of a small attendance in a lawmaking assembly were familiar. Eschines says that Demosthenes contrived to have a most important preparatory ordinance of the Athenian Senate brought before the ecclesia when it had already risen, and when Æschines and most others had left the meeting. Episodes of the same sort could hardly have been unknown in Parliament, but evidently for a long time they were not important enough to call for weighty action. Perhaps the first trace of recognizing the need is the record that on the 20th of April, 1607, no bill was read and the House rose at ten o'clock, "being not above threescore." Formal action on the subject first appears January 5, 1640, when it was declared, "as a constant rule, that Mr. Speaker is not to go to his Chair, till there be at least forty in the House." It is supposed that this was a precaution taken by the Puritan majority in this the Long Parliament, lest they be caught by surprise through a slim attendance in the early hours of the sitting.

2

Why the number forty was chosen is wholly matter of conjecture. A somewhat fanciful suggestion is that inasmuch as there were forty English counties, it may have been intended that there should always be present one from each county. More probably the number was chosen arbitrarily with the idea that it would be large enough to secure a fair attendance and yet not Hatsell's Precedents, II, 127.

be irksome. Inasmuch as there were 506 members in the Long Parliament, the figure selected was certainly generous to the tardy and the truants. The choice of so small a number quickly proved fortunate. In December of 1648 so many of the members were in prison that sometimes the Speaker was obliged to send the guards to bring in enough prisoners for making up the twoscore. The number has never been changed. Forty members of Parliament still can do business, either as a House or as a Committee of the Whole.

The House of Lords is yet more liberal. There a quorum is fixed at only three. It was a principle of Roman law that three persons were enough to make a "collegium" - equivalent to our word "corporation" - and hence undoubtedly the quorum of three for the Lords. If, however, upon a division it is found that less than thirty members are present, the question is declared not to be decided.

It is singular, that provision for a quorum was made in a colonial charter before Parliament itself had a rule on the matter. The Massachusetts Bay charter (1629) provided that there should be eighteen Assistants; "and that there shall or maie be held and kept by the Governor, or Deputie Governor of the said Company, and seaven or more of the said Assistants for the tyme being, one greate generall and solemne assemblie," etc. The probability is that mercantile corporations were already accustomed to a provision of this sort, and as our colonies were at the outset nothing but trading companies, the stipulation was not novel. This cannot be said of the order of March 8, 1630-31, whereby it was directed that whenever the number of Assistants resident within the jurisdiction might be fewer than nine, it should be lawful "for the major parte of them to keep a Court." However, the order probably referred to a trial court. It appears to have aroused no question of conflict with the charter. Upon the reorganization of government by the charter of 1691, a quorum for the lower branch was provided by statute, in October, 1692: "Forty representatives at any time so assemblied shall be accounted a number sufficient to constitute a House, pass bills, and to transact and do any business proper to be done in that House." Here was an evident copying of the rule of the Long Parliament. It is quite improbable that there was any independent consideration of the matter.

The Rhode Island charter made no mention of a quorum for

the lower branch and trouble seems to have resulted. The records warrant the surmise that the authorities took advantage of a small attendance to push through something obnoxious to the people. In November, 1672, the Deputies, as "representatives of the freemen of the colony," demanded the prerogatives accorded to the House of Commons in England, and in the reform bill that followed, on a level with the all-important right of consenting to taxes, they put the requirement that "in all weighty matters, wherein the King's honor is most concerned, and the people's rights and libertys most jeoparded. . . the Assembly shall be the major part of the Deputys belonging to the whole Collony, as there must be the major part of the Assistants (by the charter). Butt otherwise, such said act (if made without the greater part of the Deputys present) such said act shall be voyd and of none effect." !

In Virginia the quorum varied. In 1685 twenty-three Burgesses met and said that since they were neither a House nor had a Speaker, they could not even adjourn, but must wait for the Governor to prorogue them. In October of 1748, the House decided by a vote of 44 to 35 that forty-one should be a House to do business. A few years later (1756) twenty-five were declared enough, but in 1769 the standing order was that the Speaker and fifteen members should be enough to adjourn, thirty to call the House and send for absent members, and fifty to proceed to business.2

In the first few years of the Maryland Assembly its quorum was fixed at ten members, but this was soon changed to a majority. The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Cæsarea, or New Jersey (1664), allowed the Assembly "to ascertain the number of their quorum," provided it be not less than one-third part of the whole. The Fundamental Constitutions of East New Jersey (1683) made one half a quorum. This was the policy after the proprietors of the two colonies surrendered their rights to the Crown, until the conflicts of the Assembly with Hunter and Burnet led the people to think a larger quorum would be safer, whereupon they made it two thirds. In 1746, the attendance of sixteen being necessary, and only fifteen being at hand, adjournment was taken to the house of a sick member, where it was resolved that fifteen should 1 R.I. Col. Rec., 11. 472-73.

'E. I. Miller, The Legislature of the Province of Virginia, 105, 110.

be the quorum. In 1772, the size of the Assembly having been increased, the quorum was changed to twenty with a requirement for twenty-four when money was to be raised.

William Penn's Charter of Liberties to Pennsylvania in 1682 provided: "In the provincial Council in all Cases and matters of moment as There agreeing upon Bills to be passed into Laws Exorting Courts of Justice having Judgment upon criminals Impeached and choice of Officers in such manner as is herein after menconed Not lesse than two Thirds of the whole Provincial Council shall make a Quorum and that the Consent and approbaton of Two Thirds of said Quorum shall be had in all such Cases and matters of Moment. And moreover that in all cases and matters of lesser moment Twenty-ffour members of the said Provincial Council shall make a quorum The Majority of which ffour and Twenty shall and may always determine on such Cases and Causes of Lesser moment." (The whole number of the Council was to be seventy-two.) This ingenious and ingenuous rule was embodied in the Frame of Government of 1682, and in substance was repeated in 1683 and again in 1696, disappearing with the abolition of the Council as a part of the Legislature in 1701. The quorum for the General Assembly was two thirds, with no discriminations for minor business. So large a requirement was fatal to that body when in the Revolutionary period the movement for a Constitution became irresistible. The enemies of change tried to keep the old Assembly a-going, but less than two thirds of the members attending day after day, the situation became ridiculous at last and the old system had to make way for the new. Nevertheless the two-thirds quorum was put into the State Constitution.

By the Carolina Concessions of 1665, a quorum was fixed at a third part. Locke in his Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 made thirteen a quorum of the Grand Council, which was to have fifty members; for the Parliament one half was to be the quorum. Governor Glen of South Carolina, in a letter to the Duke of Bedford in October of 1748, expressed the belief that the greatest evil in the legislative processes of the province was in regard to a quorum of the House. Its membership was fortyfive and the requirement of nineteen for a quorum caused many delays. He had frequently seen seventeen or eighteen attending and adjourning day after day for a week together, until at last it was thought proper to prorogue them for a month or two, and