Suppose an amendment moved to a motion for the previous question? Answer: The previous question cannot be amended. Parliamentary usage, as well as the 9th rule of the Senate, has fixed its form to be, "Shall the main question be now put?" _i. e._, at this instant. And as the present instant is but one, it can admit of no modification. To change it to to-morrow, or any other moment, is without example and without utility. But suppose a motion to amend a motion for postponement, as to one day instead of another, or to a special instead of indefinite time. The useful character of amendment gives it a privilege of attaching itself to a secondary privileged motion. That is, we may amend a postponement of a main question. So we may amend a commitment of a main question, as by adding, for example, "with instruction to inquire," &c. In like manner, if an amendment be moved to an amendment, it is admitted. But it would not be admitted in another degree, to wit, to amend an amendment to an amendment of a main question. This would lead to too much embarrassment. The line must be drawn somewhere; and usage has drawn it after the amendment to the amendment. The same result must be sought by deciding against the amendment to the amendment, and then moving it again as it was wished to be amended. In this form it becomes only an amendment to an amendment. _In filling a blank with a sum, the largest sum shall be first put to the question, by the 18th Rule of the Senate_, contrary to the rule of Parliament, which privileges the smallest sum and longest time.--5 _Grey_, 179; 2 _Hats._ 8, 83; 3 _Hats._ 132, 133. And this is considered to be not in the form of an amendment to the question, but as alternative or successive originals. In all cases of time or number, we must consider whether the larger comprehends the lesser, as in a question to what day a postponement shall be, the number of a committee, amount of a fine, term of an imprisonment, term of irredeemability of a loan, or the _terminus in quem_ in any other case. Then the question must begin _a maximo_. Or whether the lesser includes the greater, as in question on the limitation of the rate of interest, on what day the session shall be closed by adjournment, on what day the next shall commence, when an act shall commence, or the _terminus a quo_ in any other case, where the question must begin _a minimo_. The object being not to begin at that extreme, which, and more, being within every man's wish, no one could negative it, and yet, if we should vote in the affirmative, every question for more would be precluded; but at that extreme which would unite few, and then to advance or recede till you get to a number which will unite a bare majority.--3 _Grey_, 376, 384, 385. "The fair question in this case is not that to which and more all will agree, whether there shall be addition to the question."--1 _Grey_, 365.