Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/110

80 may declare that there is need for adjournment or that there is no need for consideration of it; but in this last case, the project for a decree can be presented again in the same session.

Every project for a decree shall be printed and distributed before the second reading of it can be given.

6. After the third reading, the president shall be required to put in deliberation and the legislative body shall decide whether it finds itself in condition to render a definitive decree or whether it wishes to postpone the decision to another time in order to receive more ample enlightenment.

7. The legislative body cannot deliberate unless the sitting is composed of at least two hundred members, and no decree shall be passed except by a majority of the votes.

8. No project of law which, submitted to discussion, shall have been rejected after the third reading can be presented again in the same session.

9. The preamble of every definitive decree shall announce expressly: 1st, the dates of the sittings at which the three readings of the project shall have occurred; 2d, the decree by which, after the third reading, it shall have been determined to decide definitively.

10. The king shall refuse his sanction to a decree whose preamble does not attest the observation of the above forms: if any of these decrees be sanctioned, the ministers shall not seal it and promulgate it, and their responsibility in this respect shall last for six years.

11. The decrees recognized and declared urgent by a prior declaration of the legislative body are excepted from the above provisions; but they can be modified or revoked in the course of the same session.

The decree by which the matter shall have been declared urgent shall set forth the motives thereof; and there shall be mention made of this prior decree in the preamble of the definitive decree.

Section III. Of the royal sanction.

1. The decrees of the legislative body are presented to the king, who can refuse his consent to them.

2. In the case where the king refuses his consent, this refusal is only suspensive.