In these provinces the supreme government was in the praetor sent by the senate, who commanded the army, and in his own person exercised the judicial power.  Where the sphere of his government was large, he deputed his legates to that employment, who judged according to the standing laws of the republic, aided by those occasional declarations of law called the praetorial edicts.  The care of the revenue was in the quaestor.  He was appointed to that office in Rome; but when he acted in a judicial capacity, it was always by commission from the praetor of the province.[19] Between these magistrates and all others who had any share in the provincial government the Roman manners had established a kind of sacred relation, as inviolable as that of blood.[20] All the officers were taught to look up to the praetor as their father, and to regard each other as brethren:  a firm and useful bond of concord in a virtuous administration; a dangerous and oppressive combination in a bad one.  But, like all the Roman institutions, it operated strongly towards its principal purpose, the security of dominion, which is by nothing so much exposed as the factions and competitions of the officers, when the governing party itself gives the first example of disobedience.

On the overthrow of the Commonwealth, a remarkable revolution ensued in the power and the subordination of these magistrates.  For, as the prince came alone to possess all that was by a proper title either imperial or praetorial authority, the ancient praetors dwindled into his legates, by which the splendor and importance of that dignity were much diminished.  The business of the quaestor at this time seems to have been transferred to the emperor’s procurator.  The whole of the public revenue became part of the fisc, and was considered as the private estate of the prince.  But the old office under this new appellation rose in proportion as the praetorship had declined.  For the procurator seems to have drawn to himself the cognizance of all civil, while capital cases alone were reserved for the judgment of the legate.[21] And though his power was at first restrained within narrow bounds, and all his judgments were subject to a review and reversal by the praetor and the senate, he gradually grew into independence of both, and was at length by Claudius invested with a jurisdiction absolutely uncontrollable.  Two causes, I imagine, joined to produce this change:  first, the sword was in the hands of the legate; the policy of the emperors, in order to balance this dangerous authority, thought too much weight could not be thrown into the scale of the procurator:  secondly, as the government was now entirely despotical, a connection between the inferior officers of the empire and the senate[22] was found to shock the reason of that absolute mode of government, which extends the sovereign power in all its fulness to every officer in his own district, and renders him accountable to his master alone for the abuse of it.