Mr. SCHENCK. With the leave of the Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mr. STEveNs, I wish to call his attention to a possible difficulty that may arise under his proposition. He proposes to strike out any provision for a 2nd session, and depend upon each Congress to fix a time for an adjourned meeting. Now, Congress may take a “recess, ” though there is a little doubt what that may be; but there cannot be a regular meeting of Congress except on the 1st Monday of December, unless some other time be fixed by law. It is a question between an adjourned meeting and a recess, if anyone can draw the precise distinction. But the precedents are these, as I find on consulting the record: that the 1st Congress, sitting solely so as to make it expedient not to meet on the 1st Monday of December, passed a short enactment going through all the forms of a regular act of Congress, and approved by the President, changing the time by putting it January instead of December. And there are 4 or 5 other cases in which the early congresses, beginning with the practice established y the 1st, seem to have interpreted the constitution by passing enactments and not resolutions for this purpose, so as to claim that their power to make an adjourned meeting to make a meeting of Congress other than that provided in the Constitution must be done, as the constitution itself requires, by law. The language of the Constitution, I presume, every one is familiar with. Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the 1st Monday in December, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. I propose to get rid of all questions hereafter as to whether it is a recess or an adjournment, whether it is a regular meeting, a meeting in continuation of the same ses 5ion, or whether it is one of the regular meetings of Congress under the Constitution, by fixing it by law. Congress which meets on the 4th of March, or either of these other times, may take a recess, and that is the only way they can accomplish a meeting between any 2 regular sessions unless by law, by enact.ment under all the forms of a statute. I suggest that as a difficulty you escape in drawing the bill as mine has been drawn. I repeat that in 4 or 5 cases where the 1st and 2 or 3 successive Congresses acted on this subject, and changed the time fixed in the Constitution, they did it by enactment under all the forms of law.