Tradition credits the first consul Valerius Publicola with its institution, and makes the quaestors the guardians of its wealth and probably of its archives.[330] The public chest of Rome must have been a primitive matter enough at a time when coined money was not in general use; but it is not improbable that finance did at this time become a definite department. It could no longer be a purely domestic matter; the lands of the kings had become crown lands of the state; the series of wars into which Rome was plunged must have rendered a constant collection of the war-tax necessary; none would more naturally have been entrusted with the control and disbursement of revenue than the perpetual delegates of the consuls; and the formalism of Roman character would lead us to believe that the consuls had regular modes of acting through their quaestors, and that these officials so far limited the power of their masters. It is not improbable that the quaestors were originally nominated by the consuls without the direct intervention of the people; but this does not exclude some popular ratification of the choice.[331] It was not until about the year 449 that their election was transferred to the newly-constituted _comitia_ of the tribes. And, as the consuls nominated their delegates, so the regal tradition was continued which gave them the nomination of their council of state, the Senate. In their choice of members they were legally as unfettered as the king had been, and could summon new members or omit to summon those already on the list.[332] So far as law went, the personnel of the Senate might now be changed annually. But custom must have been stronger than law. The body had gained a definiteness in its constitution, based on its representative character and probably on actual life-membership, which could not be easily destroyed, and the consul had a colleague at his side to check any attempt at capricious removal or selection. The short tenure of office must already have made a magistrate unwilling to exercise a power which might be so easily turned against himself in the near future. The discretionary power of the magistrate would have made the choice of Plebeians possible, now that they were possessed of all the essential rights of full citizenship;[333] but it does not appear that this choice could have been often, if ever, exercised. The patrician clans had a close hereditary connexion with the Senate; the _interregnum_, which was the transmission of auspices by the _patres_, had long been one of its privileges, and the prejudices of the patrician magistracy would hardly have allowed it to dip into the inferior order for councillors. If there be any truth in the story that, on the abolition of the monarchy, the thinned ranks of the _patres_ were again raised to 300 by the inclusion of persons specially enrolled (_adlecti_ or _conscripti_),[334] these added members were probably, like their predecessors, patrician.