The power of legislating, that is of establishing fundamental changes in civic relations, was never claimed by the Senate; nor had it ever possessed any legal right to suggest or impede the making of a law. The _patrum auctoritas_, like the _interregnum_, had resided only with the patrician members of that body; and the power of previous deliberation claimed by the later Senate as a whole was merely one of the inevitable results of the balance of power within the magistracy. Such slight approximations to law-making as are found were simply the result of consultation by the magistrates on questionable points. The Senate reaffirmed an ancient principle that the confession of a slave which might doom his master to death or exile should not be wrung from him by torture;[1331] it might even infringe so much on the freedom of contract as to suggest a current rate of interest[1332]—a principle which the praetor might respect if he cared or if his colleague obliged him to do so. But here again we meet with the strange anomaly that the Senate can destroy where it cannot create. It claimed the sovereign privilege of exempting individuals from the operation of the laws, and the claim which was an admitted usurpation was sanctioned by custom. Formerly the sovereign people could alone grant such dispensations, but the motion submitted to the people was first approved by the Senate. Very gradually the second stage in the proceedings was dropped, for it was considered the merely formal sanction of an already accomplished act; and the senatorial right of dispensation was assured until it was attacked by the tribune Cornelius (67 B.C.). The proposal that it should be restored to the people was successfully resisted, but a compromise was arrived at by which it was agreed that no act of dispensation should be valid which had not been approved by a house of at least two hundred members.[1333] This provision, evidently meant to prevent the abuse of the power for purely personal or party ends, did not fulfil its purpose, for _senatus consulta_ of this kind were gained by influential men on the slightest pretexts and for the most unworthy objects.[1334]