,
magistrate commands is unconditionally valid so long as he remains
in office, and that, while legislation no doubt belongs only to the king
and the burgesses in concert, the royal edict is equivalent to law
at least till the demission of its author.

The Senate as the State-Council of the Monarch

While the democratic king thus conceded to the community of the people
at least a formal share in the sovereignty, it was by no means
his intention to divide his authority with what had hitherto been
the governing body, the college of senators. The senate of Caesar
was to be--in a quite different way from the later senate of Augustus--
nothing but a supreme council of state, which he made use
of for advising with him beforehand as to laws, and for the issuing
of the more important administrative ordinances through it,
or at least under its name--for cases in fact occurred where decrees
of senate were issued, of which none of the senators recited
as present at their preparation had any cognizance. There were
no material difficulties of form in reducing the senate to it
original deliberative position, which it had overstepped more de facto
than de jure; but in this case it was necessary to protect himself
from practical resistance, for the Roman senate was as much
the headquarters of the opposition to Caesar as the Attic Areopagus
was of the opposition to Pericles. Chiefly for this reason
the number of senators, which had hitherto amounted at most
to six hundred in its normal condition(21) and had been greatly reduced
by the recent crises, was raised by extraordinary supplement
to nine hundred; and at the same time, to keep it at least
up to this mark, the number of quaestors to be nominated annually,
that is of members annually admitted to the senate, was raised
from twenty to forty.(22) The extraordinary filling up of the senate
was undertaken by the monarch alone. In the case of the ordinary
additions he secured to himself a permanent influence through
the circumstance, that the electoral colleges were bound by law(23)
to give their votes to the first twenty candidates for the quaestorship
who were provided with letters of recommendation from the monarch;
besides, the crown was at liberty to confer the honorary rights
attaching to the quaestorship or to any office superior to it,
and consequently a seat in the senate in particular, by way of exception
even on individuals not qualified. The selection of the extraor