Page:Bourinots Rules of Order 1918.djvu/18

 the instincts of a self-governing people, there are numerous conventions, synods, conferences, literary, labour and benevolent associations, and directors' and shareholders' meetings, which have grown out of the requirements of all classes in these busy times.

2. All public bodies governed by parliamentary law.—The meetings of these several bodies, from the simple primary, ward, village or town assembly to the complicated session of parliament, governed by the leading principles of the common law of parliament—those generally recognized rules which have had their origin in the parent state, the old home of the common law and of the parliamentary system of Canada and of all the English-speaking peoples of the world. It is a well understood principle that the people of these dependencies, in adopting the common law of England, did not adopt it in its entirety, but only those parts of the system which are suited to a new colonial condition, very different from the state of society under which the usages of the common law grew up. On the same principle, the common law of parliament that governs in this country is that system of rules and conventions which has been adapted from the elaborate system of the great prototype of all legislative assemblies, and established by usage and prescription in this Dominion to meet existing conditions. As a matter of fact, the differences of law and procedure are relatively few—the method of putting amendments being one of those differences-but where