Down to 1834, the custom of procedure in Congress had been to receive, hear, and refer all petitions. That was going one step farther than was required by the constitutional right of petition; still it was the regular course, and such men as Mr. Adams thought it unwise to depart from the custom in the case of the Abolition petitions. At any rate, Mr. Hammond's motion was a new proposition. The Speaker said that he was "not aware that such a motion had ever been sustained by the former practice of the House," and appeared to rule Mr. Hammond's motion out of order. A confused wrangle ensued over the attitude assumed by the Speaker, during which Mr. Hammond made a motion to reject the petition, and the Speaker, becoming confused by the two motions, the one not to receive, and the other to reject, and knowing that the House could of course reject the prayer of a petition, yielded to the representations of Mr. Hammond, and put Mr. Hammond's motion not to _receive_ the petition to the House. The House voted not to refuse to receive the petition, but the ruling of the Speaker in putting the motion implied that the House possessed the power to refuse to receive, that is, to refuse to hear, a petition. Another confused wrangle ensued over the question whether the House had voted merely not to refuse to receive the petition, or had voted to consider its contents at once. After a day of heated debate and three days of adjournment, during which excited feelings were somewhat calmed, the House reversed all former action, and voted to lay the petition and all the motions relating to it on the table. {257} [Sidenote: True view of the right of petition.] Another petition, which, during this wrangle had been inadvertently referred to the committee on the District, was now recalled by a motion to reconsider the vote of reference. It was upon this motion that Mr. Adams made his first great appeal for the right of petition. As we have seen, his view before this was that petitions must be received, heard, and referred. In this speech, however, he indicated that there should be a report from the committee, and a vote upon the report. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, met Mr. Adams' assertions quite successfully, and showed conclusively that, if the right of petition should be interpreted to reach any farther than the right to have the petition received and heard, it would so modify the constitutional right of the House to establish its own rules of procedure as to put it in the power of a few determined obstructionists outside the House, acting with a single member of the House, to prevent the House from doing anything but consider petitions upon a single subject, sacrificing thus the interests of the whole people to the obstinacy of a small number of the people. [Sidenote: The power of Congress over slavery in the District of Columbia.]