We have already seen that, in the most essential fact of sovereignty—the creation of the Principate—the Senate and people, or rather the Senate as representing the people, was theoretically supreme.[1802] The attribute of sovereignty that comes nearest to this is the power of legislation, for it is one that the “determinate human superior” generally retains in his own hands. The other functions that are usually associated with the highest authority in a community, such as the control of general administration, jurisdiction, finance, cultus and coinage, may more easily be delegated. If the delegation is temporary, there is no division of sovereign power; if perpetual, there is such a division unless the legislative power be thought of as capable of recalling the mandate. We have already seen to what a large extent the people had delegated its powers to the Princeps, and we have also seen that this delegation was, in fact though not in theory, perpetual.[1803] But, in the spheres of authority which we are now about to examine, there is neither the theory of complete retention, nor that of complete delegation, of sovereign power. The sovereign has partly retained and has partly delegated in perpetuity every one of the functions of government which we have enumerated, and this singular dualism affects, not only the administrative, but even the legislative activity of the state. (i.) _Legislation._—With respect to legislation it has already been shown how the _comitia_ still uttered their general mandates until a period at least as late as the reign of Nerva.[1804] But, even before the legislative power of the people became extinct, this power had been passing to the Senate; and in the strict theory of the constitution, true legislative authority is to be finally found only in the great council which represents the people. The origin of this senatorial legislation is doubtless to be sought in the advice on legal points which the Republican Senate had often tendered to the magistrate, and in the interpretation of customary law or of enactments which often accompanied this advice.[1805] It has, indeed, been noted that the _senatus consulta_ of the Principate, which prescribe general commands such as in the Republic would have been the subject of _leges_, are often expressed in this advisory form;[1806] decrees of the Senate never attained the formal structure of a law;[1807] they also lack its imperative mode of utterance, and for these two reasons they were never described as _leges_. The highest degree of validity which the jurist could give them was “the binding force of laws”;[1808] but this force was sufficient to make them sources of the _jus civile_,[1809] and down to the third century such general commands as tended to alter the fundamental legal relations of Roman citizens to one another, were generally expressed in the form of _senatus consulta_.