Page:Bourinots Rules of Order 1918.djvu/26

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RULES OF ORDER.
13

generally provide for a regular order of business[1], which will be prepared for each meeting by the secretary or clerk, or scribe, or whatever may be the name of the recording officer, and should be called, item by item, by the chairman or clerk. It is absolutely eвsential to a proper discharge of the functions of every body that such an order should be regularly prepared and adhered to. In the case of an ordinary or primary or mass meeting, it should also be the duty of those responsible for its assembling and interested in its deliberations and debates, to arrange at the outset among themselves an order of proceeding, and not leave it to haphazard, and the confusion that would then probably ensue. All these matters, however, will be explained in their proper place, when we come to consider the proceedings of particular meetings.

12. Notices of motions and proceedings.—If this order of the day is to be effective and to carry out its main object of enabling each member of a permanent assembly or organized society to discuss every question that comes before it with some knowledge, it is necessary that the rules should provide as far as possible for a notice of every substantive motion or proceeding, in accordance with a fundamental principle of parliamentary procedure—questions of privilege and order, demanding the immediate interposition of the house,

  1. See below, p. 42, for parliamentary rule respecting order of procedure: also for that of city councils, Fifth Part, II. sec. 13.