corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years —­and besides the limitations resulting from the right of veto vested in the colleague and the right of cancelling vested in the successor, there was added a farther check which exercised a very sensible influence; a usage equivalent to law made it the duty of the censor not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in writing the grounds for his decision, or, in other words, adopting, as a rule, a quasi-judicial procedure.

Remodelling of the Constitution According to the Views of the Nobility Inadequate Number of Magistrates

In this political position—­mainly based on the senate, the equites, and the censorship—­the nobility not only usurped in substance the government, but also remodelled the constitution according to their own views.  It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the appreciation of the public magistracies, to add to the number of these as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by the extension of territory and the increase of business.  Only the most urgent exigencies were barely met by the division of the judicial functions hitherto discharged by a single praetor between two judges —­one of whom tried the lawsuits between Roman burgesses, and the other those that arose between non-burgesses or between burgess and non-burgess—­in 511, and by the nomination of four auxiliary consuls for the four transmarine provinces of Sicily (527), Sardinia including Corsica (527), and Hither and Further Spain (557).  The far too summary mode of initialing processes in Rome, as well as the increasing influence of the official staff, are doubtless traceable in great measure to the practically inadequate numbers of the Roman magistracy.

Election of Officers in the Comitia

Among the innovations originated by the government—­which were none the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution—­the most prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers’ posts as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority.  As regards the nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the more in substance.  It had already, in the course of the previous period, been in great part transferred from the general to the burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole staff-officers of the regular yearly levy—­the twenty-four military tribunes of the four ordinary legions—­were nominated in the -comitia tributa-.  Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was drawn between the subalterns, who gained their promotion from the general by punctual and brave service, and the staff, which obtained its privileged position by canvassing the