Augustus had persuaded them to pass an ordinance forbidding them to go abroad without his permission. He made them fine their members for non-attendence, and it is highly significant that it was difficult to keep a quorum of the senate for public business. He chose his own order for asking their opinions and thus promoted them in honour or degraded them as he pleased. It was mainly the poor and unimportant provinces which had fallen to their share. Asia was the richest and most important, but almost throughout the period there is some scion of the imperial house with a general control over the affairs of the East. There is an inscription in Cyprus which proves that even when that island was under senatorial government a proconsul was sent out “by the authority of Cæsar and a decree of the senate” to restore order. Finally by the end of the reign the senate had become so feeble and unreal that twenty of its members sitting in Cæsar’s house were able to pass decrees which had the full validity of the old sovereign council of Rome. These considerations are enough to prove that Monarchy is the only term which can properly describe the real nature of the new government. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere in this system of compromise and half-way houses, we must walk warily between two fallacies. The senate is there and will always be there. When Constantine made a new Rome he made a new senate. As we study the subsequent progress of the Empire we shall sometimes find the senate really supreme. It chose Galba and Nerva. It dared to depose Maximin. It really governed through Tacitus and Probus. It was its constant aim to get its members declared immune from prosecution and sometimes it succeeded; but more often it served as a whipping-stock when Cæsar was in a bad temper. Only in this sense is there any meaning in the term Dyarchy: if we take the whole period of the principate from Augustus to Diocletian there is some trace of equilibrium, faint though it be. And we must not fall into the error of despising the letter of a constitution for the sake of its spirit. Though a king of England never refuses a bill in practice, it nevertheless remains important that he may. The letter is always there for reference, if not for use, and the spirit is always liable to be brought up for trial before it. The practice depends upon personal forces which are transitory, the theory is always there awaiting its opportunity. THE PEOPLE AND THE MAGISTRATES