A greater, a lasting magistracy, and according to all appearance the first, the lustre of which far outshone that of the military tribunes, was the censorship. If we admit that it was instituted by the twelve tables, we can understand why Cicero also made the censors the first magistrates. He may have copied this from the laws of the twelve tables; only he must have left out something, as there they had yet a greater number of attributes. The consuls are said to have formerly had the functions of the censors; which is very probable from the almost kingly power of the consuls, and it is only to be wondered how they could have got through this immense amount of work. The Greek states also had τιμηταί, Athens alone excepted, and the Siceliote and Italiote towns had them as well; yet nowhere in Greece was their power so extensive as at Rome. According to the Roman law, the censors had to value and assess; accurate lists were kept of properties, of births and deaths, of newly admitted citizens. Yet we are to distinguish between two kinds of lists. The one was of persons, and was arranged according to names; Q. Mucius, for instance, with all his family and rateable property, stood under his name among the _Tribus Romilia_: his sons wearing the _toga virilis_ may perhaps have had each a distinct _caput_. The other list was topographical; in it the landed estates were registered according to the districts, for instance, the _Tribus Romilia_ in all its divisions. The ancients wrote on the whole much more than is generally imagined; this was done with a prolixity which was part of the forms of the state. In London, I saw a register of lands belonging to an Indian province,--in the translation, of course, as I do not understand a word of the Indian language,--which had a copiousness of detail of which we can scarcely form an idea. And it was the same among the ancients: the registers of mortgages at Athens were very prolix; and so, even in later ages, were the contracts before the curies at Rome. In the registers of the Roman censors, the division of the hides was very accurately marked down; under the _caput_ of every individual, his descent, tribe, station, property, &c. were entered. Now the censors had also the power of transferring people from one class to the other, as an honour or a disgrace; yet what were the qualities for which they pronounced the _ignominia_, as it is termed? Every one in Rome was to correspond to the definition of his station; a plebeian was necessarily an agriculturist, either a land-owner or a free day labourer. This rule was laid down positively; and still more strictly in its negative bearing, as no one who carried on a trade or business could be a plebeian. Whoever did so, was forthwith struck out of the list of the tribe; consequently this was not so much a personal _ignominia_, as a declaration that he had passed from one side to the other. But he who badly cultivated