To understand the facilities for information and the freedom of debate possessed by the Senate, we must have a clear view of the functions of its presidents and of the position of the ordinary magistrates in that assembly. The right of summons and the right of laying business before the body were inseparable; both were possessed by three orders of magistrates—consuls, praetors, and tribunes. But law, in the shape of the power given by the _major potestas_, made it impossible for the praetor to exercise his right of summons in defiance of the consul; while custom dictated that even the tribune should not exercise this right when the consul was at Rome. But, once the summons has been issued and obeyed, the convoker of the council is not its only president. The three classes of magistrates have each the right of reference, and each in an order prescribed by customary law. The consuls’ motions come first; they are followed by those of the praetors, and then the tribunes have their turn.[1309] This system of priority, although necessary to prevent confusion, was under ordinary circumstances a matter of comparative unimportance. It could only become a serious hindrance to the freedom of debate if the consul abruptly dismissed the meeting before a decision had been reached on some question of pressing importance,[1310] or if a method of systematic obstruction were adopted by some senator, who wasted the hours with prolix oratory until the setting of the sun made a suspension of business legally necessary. But the former device was revolutionary in its character, and on the occasion of its use a fit preparation for a revolution; while the latter seems to have been employed, as by the younger Cato during Caesar’s consulship, as a weapon against an offensive _relatio_ already before the house.[1311] The president himself had ample powers for meeting such designs; in the case in question the consul had the obstructive stoic haled from the room.[1312] A more serious danger would have been the absence of information from the officials who succeeded the consul in putting motions before the house; but this was obviated by the power which magistrates had of speaking (_verba facere_) without invitation at any period of the debate. This power was possessed as an admitted right by those magistrates who were themselves presiding; the quaestors, whose financial statements were indispensable, and the aediles may have exercised it only on sufferance. This privilege was the more necessary as the presiding magistrates at least could not be asked their opinion by the official who held the attention of the house; they could not give advice, for they were themselves seeking it of others.