(1) The censorship was an irresponsible office.[1022] Its holders could not be called to account for any act done in connexion with the _census_, any act that was an outcome of the _censoria potestas_ ratified by the _lex centuriata_; and although the _lectio senatus_ was a later addition to their functions, this power seems to have been included in the indemnity. This principle of immunity was stated in a decree of the Senate of the year 204 B.C.,[1023] and, although often challenged by the tribunes, was maintained until the close of the Republic. One of the effects of the Clodian _plebiscitum_ of 58 B.C., which limited the discretionary power of the censors in the _regimen morum_,[1024] would have been to make them judicially responsible for a breach of its provisions; but this law was soon repealed. The censors were also free from the usual limitation created by the tribunician intercession; it was clearly invalid against the particular _potestas_ exercised at the _census_,[1025] although the _obnuntiatio_ could be employed against the summons of the people to the _census_ and the _lustrum_, as against any other _contio_.[1026] (2) The limitation of tenure to eighteen months caused a break in the continuity of the magistracy, and was a symbol that the office was merely occasional. The censorial ordinances were valid for the whole quinquennial period of the _lustrum_, but, whatever may have been the original intention of the limitation of tenure, it was continued as an effective guarantee against such enormous powers being exercised for a continuous period of four or five years.[1027] (3) Re-election to the censorship was forbidden, for a continuous moral control exercised by the same men would have been intolerable.[1028] (4) The collegiate principle operated here as in other offices, but nowhere was the check of the veto more necessary and more healthy than in its influence on the arbitrary moral judgments of the censors. Without it the Senate might have been packed by a single man, and degradation from the highest positions and on the scantiest evidence might have been due to caprice, and followed by the unpopularity which divided responsibility renders less intense.[1029] The collegiate relation was, indeed, closer in this than in any other magistracy. Its holders must be elected together, the name of the singly-appointed censor not being returned;[1030] and, whether from grounds of convenience or from a religious scruple, it was enacted that, if one post was vacated by abdication or death, the holder of the other should resign.[1031]