Ordinance 719-B

Ordinance 719-B is the short designation of the Instrument of Provisional Silence, a procedural ordinance first sealed on 14 Emberwane 9,412 and amended four times since. It is not, as is frequently supposed, an ordinance concerning quiet. It governs the interval during which a matter under review may not be discussed, and prescribes the forms by which that interval is begun, extended, and — in the two documented cases — mistakenly ended early. Its current form is administered by the Office of Unfinished Business, though the instrument was drafted by a different office altogether, which is the root of most of its difficulties.

Origin and sealing

Ordinance 719-B was drafted in the winter of 9,411 by the Undersecretary for Deferred Matters, a post abolished in 9,430 and never formally replaced. Its purpose was modest: to provide a document by which a matter could be set aside while a larger matter was resolved, without the set-aside itself requiring a fresh hearing. The earlier Ordinance 719 had attempted the same and failed on a technicality — it required the silence to be declared aloud, and the declaration then became the very discussion it was meant to prevent.

Ordinance 719-B corrected this by declaring the silence in writing only. The Librarians approved the correction without debate, and it passed under the procedural authority of Ordinance 707, as nearly everything did in that period. The seal affixed to the original is held on Floor 4404, where it is examined once every nine years and has twice been found to be the wrong seal, a discrepancy noted and never resolved.

The instrument in practice

Under 719-B, a matter is placed in silence by a single page bearing the matter's reference, the date, and the signature of the clerk who has most recently touched it. The silence then runs until the matter is spoken of again. This is the whole of the mechanism, and it is the reason the instrument is both unenforceable and impossible to violate: the silence is broken by any discussion, including a discussion of whether the silence has been broken.

"A matter under 719-B is not closed, not open, and not pending. It is resting, and will be woken when it is next mentioned. Clerks are asked not to mention it."

— Office of Unfinished Business, Circular 19

The two recorded early terminations are instructive. The first occurred in 9,417 when a clerk read the matter aloud while searching for a different page. The second occurred in 9,438 when a clerk mentioned the matter aloud to another clerk without searching for anything at all. Both were ruled to be proper terminations, and the second ruling has been appealed continuously and unsuccessfully ever since by a clerk who maintains that the second clerk has never been identified.

Relation to the Concordances

The Second Concordance holds, at Article 11, that instruments of silence cannot be compounded — that a matter may be silenced only once, and a second silence is void, as the first silence was never broken because it was never spoken of. The Fifth Concordance holds the opposite at Article 3, and further holds that a matter silenced twice remains silenced, which under the Fifth's reasoning is a stronger silence than an unspoken one.

The Office of Unfinished Business administers the instrument according to the Fifth Concordance and has said so in writing since 9,441. The Hall of Recensions administers it according to the Second and has said so since 9,439. Both are correct, and both are recorded as such. The Seventh Concordance addresses the conflict directly and refuses to resolve it, having been drafted in confidential session, which the Office — which has never seen it — cites as evidence that the instrument is a failure.

Interaction with other ordinances

Ordinance 719-B is not a cessation instrument and must not be confused with Ordinance of Cessation 73-C, which suspends. 719-B merely rests. Nor is it a reclassification: it does not alter the matter, and a matter silenced under 719-B retains its original classification, though this is not always possible to confirm. The Office of Unfinished Business notes that 719-B is silent on whether silence is itself a change of status, and that this question has been referred to itself and is being considered, quietly, at the time of writing.

The instrument was explicitly not named in the corrigenda to Ordinance 707.12, and survives unchanged for that reason — the same oversight that preserved Ordinance 22.8 after the superseding of Ordinance 22. The clerks of the Office are aware of this and generally do not speak of it. It has not been amended, they observe, by anyone who thought to name it.

Correspondence between the two offices is unchanged since 9,441 and continues to be filed in the usual way, and the two baskets are kept on opposite sides of the desk so that the clerk cannot reach both without standing.

Note to visiting clerks: the basket on the left is not a filing point, and items placed in it are not retrieved.