The development of procedure in the General Assembly of Newfoundland

Courage, John Roland (1960) The development of procedure in the General Assembly of Newfoundland. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis is an account of the development of procedure in the House of Assembly of Newfoundland. It is not a history of government and many matters that would be included in such a history have been omitted. Procedure might be defined as an account of the internal working and operation of a parliament with the politics left out. Rules of procedure, however, do not operate in a vacuum, but develop to enable a legislature to do its work in an efficient and orderly manner. It was necessary, therefore, to give a short history of the General Assembly of Newfoundland in order that the reader might know something of the framework within which the procedure operates. This has been done in the first two chapters. -- Chapters three to eleven deal with parliamentary Practice and Procedure and show the workings of The House of Assembly since 1833. While the author has depended for the background of this work on the British and Canadian authorities who have written for guidance of Speakers and Members of Parliament, he has endeavoured to show how The House of Assembly developed, applied and in some cases changed parliamentary practice to suit its own needs. This has made necessary the use of the topical rather than the chronological method of writing. The last chapter deals with the effect of Confederation on the Newfoundland Legislature, and brings the development of procedure down to the present day. -- There was a wealth of material upon which to draw, but the writer found the Journals and Proceedings of the Assembly and the Legislative Council his most fruitful sources. The criterion for including any event was, did it happen in the House of Assembly, or was it directly connected with the House or its procedure. Nothing has been written on this subject in Newfoundland since 1855, when John Little, a St. John's lawyer, wrote a small book, The Constitution of Newfoundland, nor has any Provincial Parliament of Canada before been the subject of a work of this nature.

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