Note Return to text — Chapter XIV · OF RECONSIDERATION.

254. The inconvenience of this rule, which is still maintained in all its strictness in the British parliament (though divers expedients are there resorted to to counteract or evade it),[Footnote 35] has led to the introduction into the parliamentary practice of this country of the motion for reconsideration; which, while it recognizes and upholds the rule in all its ancient strictness, yet allows a deliberative assembly, for sufficient reasons, to relieve itself from the embarrassment and inconvenience, which would occasionally result from a strict enforcement of the rule in a particular case.