pinion of the senate in affairs of importance
which were neither judicial nor military, as, for instance--apart
from the proposals to be submitted to the assembly of the people--in
the imposition of task-works and taxes, in the summoning of the
burgesses to war-service, and in the disposal of the conquered
territory; but such a previous consultation, though usual, was not
legally necessary. The king convoked the senate when he pleased,
and laid before it his questions; no senator might declare his
opinion unasked, still less might the senate meet without being
summoned, except in the single case of its meeting on occasion
of a vacancy to settle the order of succession in the office of
-interrex-. That the king was moreover at liberty to call in and
consult other men whom he trusted alongside of, and at the same
time with, the senators, is in a high degree probable. The advice,
accordingly, was not a command; the king might omit to comply with
it, while the senate had no other means for giving practical effect
to its views except the already-mentioned right of cassation, which
was far from being universally applicable. "I have chosen you,
not that ye may be my guides, but that ye may do my bidding:" these
words, which a later author puts into the mouth of king Romulus,
certainly express with substantial correctness the position of the
senate in this respect.

The Original Constitution of Rome

Let us now sum up the results. Sovereignty, as conceived by
the Romans, was inherent in the community of burgesses; but the
burgess-body was never entitled to act alone, and was only entitled
to co-operate in action, when there was to be a departure from
existing rules. By its side stood the assembly of the elders of
the community appointed for life, virtually a college of magistrates
with regal power, called in the event of a vacancy in the royal
office to administer it by means of their own members until it
should be once more definitively filled, and entitled to overturn
the illegal decrees of the community. The royal power itself was,
as Sallust says, at once absolute and limited by the laws (-imperium
legitimum-); absolute, in so far as the king's command, whether
righteous or not, must in the first instance be unconditionally
obeyed; limited, in so far as a command contravening established
usage and not sanctioned by the true sovereign--the people--carried
no permanent legal consequences. The oldest constitutio