without their auctoritas.[1919] If they could make good their intention, they would remain unaffected by tribunician laws for the abolition of debt. But the Hortensian statute settled finally the controversy to their disadvantage. That it also rendered the consultum unessential to the validity of the plebiscite is proved not only by later usage but also by the statement of our sources that resolutions of the plebs were placed by the Hortensian act on an equal footing with laws. (3) Now that the tribunes were given equal freedom with the patrician higher magistrates in initiating legislation, it was of advantage to the nobility to bring the former into the closest possible touch with the senate. Probably therefore the right of the tribunes not only to sit in the senate, but also in the interest of their business to summon that body and to preside over its sessions when so convoked, was due to a provision of the Hortensian law.[1920] (4) A correlate of the full power to initiate legislation was the right to veto acts of the government, probably acquired by the Hortensian statute. (5) But the veto depended upon the power to prosecute.[1921] The unlimited veto implied a right to bring finable or capital actions independently of the will of the patrician magistrates. Either by a provision of the Hortensian statute or as a direct consequence of it, the tribunes acquired an unconditioned right to prosecute, being now competent in capital cases to compel the praetor to grant the auspices for holding the comitia centuriata. With the establishment of their absolute power of intercession and jurisdiction they ceased to resort to sedition. (6) Another article provided that the market-days should be fasti, allowing judicial business to be done thereon, but forbade the meeting of voting assemblies on such days.[1922] The peasants who came into the city to use the markets were thus afforded an opportunity to have their law suits settled without being engrossed by the duty of voting, though the magistrates were at liberty to invite them to informal contiones.[1923] This Hortensian provision was conservative in so far as it placed the tribunician assembly under the same pontifical regulations of the calendar as those which were to control the other forms of comitia.[1924]