The place of the Ten in the constitutional structure is below the College and parallel with the Senate. Below the College the administration bifurcates, the ordinary course of business flows through the Senate, the extraordinary through the Ten. The Ten possessed an authority equal to that of the Senate; the choice of which instrument should be used, rested with the College. The Ten appear to be of more importance than the Senate, solely because they were used upon more critical and dramatic occasions. Wherever the machinery of the College and Senate moves too slowly, we find the swifter machinery of the College and the Ten in motion. And so not only in political affairs, home and foreign, but also in affairs financial and judicial, the Council of Ten takes its part. The Ten, as being the readier instrument to the hands of the College, gradually absorbed more and more of the functions which originally belonged to the Senate. This process of absorption, and the extension of the province of the Ten, is marked by the establishment of its sub-commissions, that took their place in every department side by side with the delegations of the Senate and the ordinary magistrates. In politics and foreign affairs there is the famous office of the Three Inquisitors of State. In the region of Justice all cases of treason and coining, and certain cases of outrage on public morals, came before the Ten; and it was always open to the College to remove a case from the ordinary courts to the Ten, when State reasons rendered it expedient to do so. In the Police department the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia, and in Finance the Camerlenghi, were officers of that Council. In the War Office the artillery was under their control; and in the arsenal certain galleys, marked C.X., were always at their disposal. These five great members of the State, four regular and one irregular, formed the political and legislative departments of the Venetian Government. It would require too many details to give a similar account of the Judicial, Educational, and Religious machinery.