In all domestic matters, with the exception of civil jurisdiction and finance, the consuls were the heads of the administration,[897] and this, in the developed Republic, meant that they were the chief servants of the Senate. It was the consuls who regularly consulted this body, who expressed its decrees, as well as commands which they had a constitutional right to issue on their own authority, in the form of edicts, and who brought legislative measures, which had received senatorial approval, before the _comitia_ of the centuries and of the tribes. It was they, too, who represented the state to foreign kings and nations and introduced their envoys into the Senate. Consular jurisdiction was of two kinds, administrative and criminal. The administrative justice of the Republic was concerned chiefly with financial matters touching the interests of the community, such as pecuniary claims made by the state on individuals or by individuals on the state. The regular discharge of this duty passed to the censors; but in the gaps between the censorships it reverted to the consuls. We also find them adjudicating on questions of property between the cities of Italy.[898] In this matter they doubtless acted on the instructions of the Senate. The criminal jurisdiction of the consuls was expressed in three ways. It was for centuries, as exercised through the quaestors, the regular capital jurisdiction for ordinary, as opposed to political, crimes; it was asserted, as part of their _coercitio_, with or without appeal according to the nature of the sentence imposed;[899] or it might be jurisdiction without appeal delegated by the people. We shall trace elsewhere the growth of a custom by which the _comitia_ assigned jurisdiction on certain crimes to special commissioners. The people, who in this delegation were acting on the advice of the Senate, generally left the appointment of the commission to that body, and the Senate selected either a consul or a praetor.[900] We also find the consul presiding over a criminal inquiry (_quaestio_) raised by a point of international law, such as the question whether the repudiation of a treaty by the people should have as its consequence the surrender of the general guilty of concluding it.[901]