The Meeting of Parliament Act 1797 (37. Geo. III, c. 127) was an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1797.
Section 1 established that 14 days were to elapse from the proclamation of a new Parliament to the meeting of Parliament.
Section 3 enacted that in case of the demise of the monarch after one Parliament had been dissolved, but before the day indicated by the Writ of Summons for electing a new Parliament, then the previous Parliament (i.e. that which had been dissolved) was to be recalled immediately to Westminster. It would there sit as a parliament for the next six months, to all intents and purposes as though it had not been previously dissolved; it could, however, be dissolved or prorogued at any point during this time by the new monarch. A new writ would be issued, and the election would take place.
Section 5 provided that if the monarch died after the date of the election, then the newly-elected Parliament would meet as normal.
Section 1 was amended in 1943 to remove the 14-day limit. The rest of the Act has been repealed.
Famous quotes containing the words meeting, parliament and/or act:
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)