The censorship, though a standing, was in a certain sense an occasional office, for the tenure of power by the censors could never have been coterminous with the interval between each census—an interval usually of five years. The original tenure is unknown; possibly the censor was supposed to continue in office until his duties were fulfilled. It was not until the year 434 B.C. that the censorship was limited to a definite term of a year and a half by a _lex Aemilia_, proposed by the dictator Mamercus Aemilius.[448] The censors’ duties were as wide as the ramifications of the census. His primary function was that of registration, but one of the meanings of registration was the imposition of pecuniary burdens on individuals; hence the censor’s first connexion with finance. Another consequence of registration was of still greater import. Qualifications of character must always have been considered a necessary condition for the performance of even the meanest public functions at Rome. Admission to the centuries and to the tribes, and therefore the exercise of the active rights of voting and serving in the army, was possible only to one not stained by crime. The secular ground, one quite sufficient for a self-respecting community, was perhaps assisted by the religious idea that no impure man should be present at the mystic ceremony of purification. Such a testing of character could have been performed only in the most cursory way by the consuls. But now that a magistracy had been appointed which had leisure for a rigorous scrutiny, it was inevitable that the rule of manners (_regimen morum_) should in time overshadow every other aspect of the censor’s office, and that this dual papacy should become the most dignified and dreaded organ of the state.