But with their magnifying the glory of the censorship the government combined a characteristic distrust of this, their most important and for that very reason most dangerous, instrument.  It was thoroughly necessary to leave to the censors absolute control over the personal composition of the senate and the equites; for the right of exclusion could not well be separated from the right of summoning, and it was indispensable to retain such a right, not so much for the purpose of removing from the senate capable men of the opposition—­a course which the smooth-going government of that age cautiously avoided—­as for the purpose of preserving around the aristocracy that moral halo, without which it must have speedily become a prey to the opposition.  The right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the glitter of the naked blade—­the edge of it, which they feared, they took care to blunt.  Besides the check involved in the nature of the office—­under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic 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