With the aim of repressing electoral corruption and bringing to justice those guilty of it, it was enacted that every one condemned for bribery who should succeed in convicting another of the same crime should obtain thereby the remission of his punishment. Memmius, condemned for an act of this description, wishing to take advantage of the benefit of the legal impunity, denounced Scipio. Then Pompey appeared clothed in mourning before the tribunal, at the side of his father-in-law. At the view of this image of sorrow and of the moral pressure which resulted from it, Memmius desisted, deploring the misfortune of the Republic. As to the judges, they pushed flattery to the point of conducting Scipio back to his dwelling.[762] To put a stop in the elections to the intrigues arising from the shameless covetousness of the candidates, it was decreed that the consuls and prætors should not be allowed to take the government of a province until five years after their consulship or prætorship.[763] This discouraged the ambitious, who threw themselves into extravagant expenses in order to arrive through one of these magistracies at the government of the provinces. And nevertheless Pompey, although consul, not only preserved the proconsulship of Spain, but he caused his government to be prolonged for five years, kept a part of his army in Italy, and received a thousand talents for the maintenance of his troops. In the interest of his partisans, he did not hesitate to violate his own laws, which has made Tacitus say of him, _Suarum legum auctor idem ac subversor_.[764] The preceding law did not deprive Cæsar of the possibility of arriving at the consulship, but the Senate put in force again the law which prohibited any one who was absent from offering himself as a candidate, forgetting that it had just elected Pompey sole consul, although absent from the town of Rome. The friends of the proconsul of Gaul protested with energy. “Cæsar,” they said, “had merited well of his country; a second consulship would only be the just recompense of his immense labours; or, at all events, if they felt reluctance in conferring this great dignity upon him, they ought at least not to give him a successor, or deprive him of the benefit he had acquired.” Pompey, who had no desire of breaking with Cæsar, had recourse to Cicero[765] to add to the law already engraved on a tablet of brass, which was then the form of promulgation, that the prohibition did not apply to those who had obtained the authorisation to offer themselves as candidates in spite of their absence. All the tribunes, who had at first protested, accepted this qualification, at the motion of Cœlius.[766]