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Updated: June 21, 2025
I give due credit to the censorial brow, to the broad phylacteries, and to the imposing gravity of those magisterial rabbins and doctors in the cabala of political science. I admit that "wisdom is as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like honorable old age." But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be excused, if I caught something of the general indocility.
The pith of it consists partly in the restriction of the censorial arbitrary rule, partly in the restriction of the influence of the nobility on the one hand, and of the non- freeholders and the freedmen on the other, and so in the remodelling of the centuriate comitia according to the principle which already held good for the comitia of the tribes; a course which commended itself by the circumstance that elections, projects of law, criminal impeachments, and generally all affairs requiring the co-operation of the burgesses, were brought throughout to the comitia of the tribes and the more unwieldy centuries were but seldom called together, except where it was constitutionally necessary or at least usual, in order to elect the censors, consuls, and praetors, and in order to resolve upon an aggressive war.
For people remain quiet, they sleep secure, when they imagine that the vigilant eye of a censorial magistrate watches over all the proceedings of judicature, and that the sacred fire of an eternal constitutional jealousy, which, is the guardian of liberty, law, and justice, is alive night and day, and burning in this House.
Other Magistracies and Attributions For other magistracies in the proper sense there remained alongside of this dictatorship no room; Caesar did not take up the censorship as such, but he doubtless exercised censorial rights particularly the important right of nominating senators after a comprehensive fashion.
There was destined for distribution only the Italian domain-land, that is to say, substantially, the territory of Capua, and, if this should not suffice, other Italian estates were to be purchased out of the revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value recorded in the censorial rolls; all existing rights of property and heritable possession thus remained unaffected.
As provision was now made for a sufficient regular recruiting of its ranks by the election of the quaestors, the censorial revisions became superfluous; and by their abeyance the essential principle at the bottom of every oligarchy, the irremoveable character and life-tenure of the members of the ruling order who obtained seat and vote, was definitively consolidated.
This, as he says, with the necessity that members should be re-elected, "has delivered into the hands of the people at large the exercise of the censorial power." He has no doubt but that resistance is the remedy whereby governmental encroachment can be prevented; "resistance," he says, "is the ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of power."
Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest, in other words by the provinces; again the tribunician authority gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before the censorial censure.
On my best observation, compared with my best inquiries, I found your nobility for the greater part composed of men of a high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honor, both with regard to themselves individually, and with regard to their whole corps, over whom they kept, beyond what is common in other countries, a censorial eye.
I have allowed myself to be made legatus to Pompey, but only on condition that nothing should stand in the way of my being entirely free either to stand, if I choose, for the censorship if the next consuls hold a censorial election or to assume a "votive commission" in connexion with nearly any fanes or sacred groves.
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