In dealing with the powers of the Senate two courses lie open before us; we may either treat them in the order of their growth and show how the successive usurpations were effected, or we may describe them as they existed in their developed form. The first method would have more of an historical interest, but, apart from its difficulty and obscurity due to the frequent lack of evidence, it would result in a wholly unsystematic classification of the aggregate of acquired rights. It is preferable, therefore, to deal with the Senate’s powers in their developed form, with a preliminary warning that they were gained at very lengthy intervals and by very different means. Some, such as the control of finance, were usurped from the magistrate; others, such as the dispensation from laws, were stolen from the people; to others again, such as the control of the details of provincial government, the Senate had an altogether peculiar right, such powers being created during the period of the growth of its ascendency. With the election of magistrates the Senate of the later Republic had no direct concern, and the people alone claimed the perhaps not wholly constitutional right of deposing them. But towards the close of its tenure of power, when the struggle for existence caused it to strain its prerogatives to the utmost limit, we find the Senate claiming the very analogous right of suspending a magistrate from the exercise of the functions of his office. A charge of turbulent proceedings was the motive for the suspension of Caesar from the praetorship, and of Metellus Nepos from the tribunate in 62,[1329] and Caelius Rufus was ejected, on the allegation of similar misconduct, from the curule chair of the praetor in 48.[1330] The use of this power against the praetor, or indeed against any magistrate subject to the _major potestas_ of the tribune, is comprehensible; for the latter might, at the bidding of the Senate, inhibit any official from the exercise of his customary functions; how the power could be employed against the tribunate itself is one of the hidden mysteries of senatorial usurpation.