All these arrangements were administrative ones; he now went on to make others which affected the constitution itself. The senate was at that time without control with regard to one of the most important branches of civil government: Polybius already remarks, that the great power of the senate in so democratical a republic was owing to two causes. In the first place, it had quite an unbounded power over the finances; so that many were dependent on it for their incomes. All the revenues of the state from customs, mines, tithes, and other sources, were let to companies of wealthy Romans; and these again in their business employed the lower classes down to the very lowest, who, therefore, were all of them under the influence of the senate, which had the supreme direction: thus indeed, though every one engaged in this way did not get his maintenance from a government employment, as with us; the result was practically the same among the Romans, that the state itself provided for a great part of its subjects. Hence swarms of these citizens spread themselves as _negotiatores_ over the provinces, and sucked their life’s blood. This was one of the circumstances which enabled the small body of the senate to stand its ground so steadily. The other means which it had, was, that all these people were obliged to have their patrons in the senate itself, and that the judges in nearly all the more important causes were senators; at least in all those which did not directly concern Quiritary property. It is one of the erroneous notions to be found everywhere, that in ancient Rome a sort of jury had existed, which was instituted only after the laws of Gracchus. During the earlier times, no trial was required in any case of _delictum manifestum_; the identity of the person being proved, the prætor immediately enforced the law, and that was all. In other cases, as in criminal causes and those civil suits which were not brought before the _centum viri_, the decision of one _arbiter_ was needed, before the prætor could pass a sentence which might be acted upon. The complaint was laid before the prætor, who after thirty days named a judge. The latter gave judgment according to certain fixed rules, from which there was no further appeal; for the appeal which there had once been to the people had been done away with, whilst for anything that was not _judicium publicum_, none perhaps had ever been allowed. Since the seventh century, several pleas for which formerly special _quæsitores_ had been appointed, from whom they came before the popular tribunals, were now judged according to the common course of law; especially the _actiones repetundarum_, the complaints of the unfortunate provincials against their governors: for these, however, several judges were granted. But this single judge, or, as the case might be, these several judges, were always senators; and this was indeed a strong tie, by which the senate strengthened its authority.