entitled to pronounce an opinion,
but voting in silence.

Powers of the Senate

The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The
senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition
by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it
permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic
direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses
acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power
--a decisive influence over legislation and the official elections,
and the whole control of the state.

Its Influence in Legislation

Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation
in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magistrate venture to lay a
proposal before the community without or in opposition to the senate's
opinion. If he did so, the senate had--in the intercessory powers of
the magistrates and the annulling powers of the priests--an ample set
of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of,
obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands
as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but
the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The
senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right
in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that
the community should ratify the proceeding--a reservation which from
the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a
form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose
the ratifying decree.

Influence on the Elections

As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the
magistrates and were of political importance, practically into the
hands of the senate. In this way it acquired, as has been mentioned
already,(25) the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had
certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the
public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has
likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of
magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite
functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was
imminent. Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on
the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the
senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to it an important share