With respect to the steps in office which followed the quaestorship, a further change was due to the unwillingness of candidates to burden themselves with the aedileship, now that its powers of bribery were of no avail, and with the now undistinguished tribunate of the Plebs. The rule was laid down that between the quaestorship and praetorship a Patrician must hold the curule aedileship, a Plebeian one of the two aedileships or the tribunate.[1702] An exemption from this lengthy course could, however, be given by an exercise of the imperial right of _adlectio_. This was the conferment of an artificial magisterial rank. In form it was a power exercised in the revision of the list of the Senate and elevated from a lower to a higher grade within that order. But the _adlectio_ also had the effect of qualifying for the magistracy immediately above the rank thus artificially assigned. One who was _adlectus inter quaestorios_ was qualified for the tribunate, one _adlectus inter tribunicios_ for the praetorship, and one _adlectus inter praetorios_ for the consulship. The consulship was amongst civic magistracies still the crown of a political career; hence the rarity of adlection _inter consulares_.[1703] A smaller honour was the conferment by the Senate, generally on the proposal of the Princeps, of the _ornamenta_ of a magistracy (_quaestoria_, _praetoria_, _consularia_) on one who had not held the magistracy itself. This honour gave no right of entry into the Senate, and none of holding the magistracy next in rank to that whose ornaments were conferred,[1704] but merely the privilege of wearing the _insignia_ of an office at festivals and on other public occasions;[1705] it may, however, have given the right of voting with the class of senators whose _ornamenta_ were conferred, if the person honoured was already provided with a seat at the Senate.[1706] This distinction was by no means reserved for persons legally qualified for the magistracy; it might be granted to knights high up in the imperial service, such as the praefects of the guard[1707] and of the watch,[1708] or to provincial procurators.[1709] Claudius granted it to imperial freedmen,[1710] and we find that even senators excluded from the curia were sometimes left the _ornamenta_ of their rank.[1711] The permission to use the ornaments of a triumph (_ornamenta triumphalia_) was the result of the limitation of the right to the actual triumph. The application of the principle that this right was inconsistent with a subordinate _imperium_,[1712] had, when applied to the Principate, the effect of legally confining triumphs to the Princeps alone; for the governors of his own provinces were merely his delegates, while those of senatorial provinces, though nominally in independent authority, had as a rule no armies at their command.[1713] The triumphal _insignia_ might, however, be granted by the Senate on the proposal of the Princeps.[1714]