But, as the foreign activity of Rome increased, and greater individual responsibility devolved on commanders distant from the centre of affairs and severed from all collegiate control, the possibilities of magisterial wrong-doing became too great to allow of the continuance of this simple system. The original theory was not, indeed, abandoned; the magistrate was tried before the same civil and criminal courts as the ordinary citizen; but the first step in the differentiation of ordinary from political jurisdiction was made when the initiatory steps in criminal proceedings against the magistrate were made the duty of a special office. It was the tribunes who were now used by the state—that is, by the Senate—as public prosecutors in criminal matters. It was a rough kind of justice which they meted out; the various charges which they brought could hardly be described by specific names, and in few cases was a penalty fixed by law. They formulated a punishment and brought it before the people, appearing as accusers either before the tribes or, when the penalty they proposed was a capital one, before the centuries, and the people, by a special legislative act, accepted or rejected their proposal.[795] Their superior _potestas_ and, when the injury was done to their person, their _sacrosanctitas_ gave them the legal right to coerce any magistrate into appealing or to bring him to trial during his year of office; but so strong was the feeling against this indignity to the magistracy that the veto of a colleague postponed the decision until the expiry of the official functions of the delinquent.[796] This political jurisdiction was not, however, directed solely against magistrates, but against any individuals who held an official position, against the staff-officers (_legati_) of a general,[797] against envoys[798] and senators,[799] and even against the farmers of the revenue (_publicani_).[800] The usual victims, however, were consuls and praetors, and the offences charged were mainly such as came under the conceptions of treason,[801] or were open violations of the rules governing the magistracy;[802] but sometimes they were wrongs done to individuals, such as might have come before the civil courts.[803]