The assignment of external spheres of rule (_provinciae_) to magistrates was one of the most important powers connected with the senatorial administration of the provinces. We have already seen how the original theory that a magistrate chose his department gave way to senatorial selection. In spite of the fact that the provinces were not assigned to specified individuals, but to holders of certain offices, this right of bestowal put great patronage in the hands of the Senate; it might reward or punish consuls or proconsuls by the assignment of more or less important districts,[1365] and the lot (_sortitio_) by which the individual holders were determined was often tampered with.[1366] The final organisation of Italy and the provinces also gave fresh spheres of influence to the Senate. The free cities, which extended over the whole of Italy, and were found as privileged units in the provinces, were subject to its controlling power. These had given up all claim to the exercise of external authority, and it was the Senate that adjusted the conflicting claims of states both within and without the bounds of Italy.[1367] When the rights of a free city were held, not by treaty, but by a precarious charter, the Senate might cancel certain grants, which, by the terms of the charter, were revocable at pleasure.[1368] In the details of provincial government and the relations of the subject cities to the governor the Senate seems seldom to have interfered directly. But we must remember that in every province the governor was accompanied by a senatorial committee in the form of a _consilium_ composed of his legates and of any senator who happened to be in the province.[1369] It was his duty to refer every important matter to this council, and the most important questions it bade him reserve for the judgment of the Senate at home.[1370] The power of the purse, which has been the guarantee of so many popular liberties, was not possessed by the people at Rome. By escaping so early the incidence of direct taxation they lost a formidable weapon with which they might have fought the Senate. For this reason the admitted incapacity of the latter body to impose a new tax on the community was no great limitation to its powers after the year 167 B.C., when the Italian _tributum_ disappeared.[1371] The control of the details of finance, which had never belonged to the people but always to the executive, was the mainstay of its power in this department. The circumstance that the control of estimates had been given to occasional officials, the censors, and that the details of expenditure had been taken from the hands of the consuls and placed in those of the most subordinate of all magistrates, the quaestors, sufficiently explains the growth of a central directing authority, which may be considered in its three relations to the property of the state, the estimates, and the expenditure.