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This strange kingdom, not resting on any basis of earthly power, dispensing with fighting, with all that an army suggests, with force, is the very opposite to Pilate's idea of a state. Rome was materialistic to the core. Her rule rested on brute force. The Empire, the Imperium, was the dominion of the Imperator, that is to say, of the commander-in-chief of the army. It was a military despotism.

It then implied that the spiritual body were no longer to be an imperium in imperio within the realm, but should hold their powers subordinate to the crown. It was now an assertion of independence of foreign jurisdiction; it was the complement of the Act of Appeals, rounding off into completeness the constitution in Church and State of the English nation.

At the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard de Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied upon Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince with prince. At the head of the Catholic party the other imperium in imperio stood the Duke of Guise.

One, the Praetor Urbanus, concerned himself in all litigation between Roman citizens; the other, the Praetor Peregrinus, had his power limited to those matters only in which foreigners were involved; for the growth of the Roman Imperium had meant the inclusion of many under its suzerainty who could not boast technical citizenship.

By direction of the senate its chief, the interrex Lucius Valerius Flaccus the father, as interim holder of the supreme power, submitted to the burgesses the proposal that the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla should receive for the past a supplementary approval of all the official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and should for the future be empowered to adjudicate without appeal on the life and property of the burgesses, to deal at his pleasure with the state-domains, to shift at discretion the boundaries of Rome, of Italy, and of the state, to dissolve or establish urban communities in Italy, to dispose of the provinces and dependent states, to confer the supreme -imperium- instead of the people and to nominate proconsuls and propraetors, and lastly to regulate the state for the future by means of new laws; that it should be left to his own judgment to determine when he had fulfilled his task and might deem it time to resign this extraordinary magistracy; and, in fine, that during its continuance it should depend on his pleasure whether the ordinary supreme magistracy should subsist side by side with his own or should remain in abeyance.

But the creation of the magistrates with Imperium depended to a large extent on the convenience of the consuls, one of whom had sometimes to be summoned back from a campaign to preside at the Comitia which were to elect his successors; while even the date of the tribunician elections might have been conditioned by political considerations.

As long as the Family was an imperium in imperio, a community within the commonwealth, governed by its own institutions of which the parent was the source, the limitation of relationship to the Agnates was a necessary security against a conflict of laws in the domestic forum.

"I don't often blackball," he remarked to Lord Southend as they were sitting down to whist, "but, really, don't you think the Imperium should maintain er a certain level?" "Iver's a devilish rich fellow and not a bad fellow either," grunted my lord. "Yes, madame, an elegant and spacious residence, Filton Park. The photo? Here it is, madame.

"Resolved thirdly: That no soldier of the Imperium leave the field of battle until the ends for which this war was inaugurated are fully achieved." A dozen men were on their feet at once to move the adoption of these resolutions. The motion was duly seconded and put before the house. The Chairman asked: "Are you ready to vote?" "Ready!" was the unanimous, vociferous response.

It is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In all that pertains to it the Emperor is absolute ruler and his executive is a special Ministry. At the same time it is almost needless to add that the Court of Berlin is practically that of the Empire.