There were in this year (67), however, two popular tribunes, A. Gabinius and C. Cornelius, both of whom proposed and carried laws in the interest of the people. Early in the year Gabinius persuaded the tribes to adopt a statute which ordered the senate to sit daily during February to consider embassies.[2696] It was in this month that delegations from other states generally came. Often to obtain a hearing they had to bribe the senators and magistrates.[2697] For that month the Gabinian law reversed the Pupian[2698] by making senatorial sessions compulsory and forbidding the concurrence of comitia.[2699] The object was to limit the stay of foreign embassies at Rome not only for their own convenience but also for lessening both the need and the opportunity for bribery. Closely related was the purpose of his statute which forbade lending money to provincials at Rome.[2700] Representatives of subject and allied states, finding it necessary to bribe more extensively than their resources in hand allowed, were tempted to borrow of the capitalists at exorbitant interest. Private individuals from the provinces must often have similarly borrowed to the ruin of their fortunes. The double aim of the statute, accordingly, was to help the provincials and to check bribery. How it passed against senatorial opposition is unknown. A supplementary measure on the same subject was proposed to the senate by C. Cornelius, a colleague of Gabinius, for prohibiting the lending of money to the legati of other states, the idea being identical with that of the two Gabinian laws. The good intention of Cornelius is vouched for by the well-known uprightness[2701] of his character, which contrasts with the reputed vileness of Gabinius. But the senate rejected the proposal on the ground that it had already made sufficient provision for checking the abuse. Although Cornelius thereupon complained in a contio that the provinces were being exhausted by usury, he does not seem to have urged his measure further.[2702] He promulgated, however, against the interests of the senate a rogation for ordering that no one should receive a dispensation from a law excepting through a vote of the comitia. This right had been acquired by the people in the period between the Publilian and the Hortensian legislation (339-287).[2703] It had come to be regarded as inseparable from the sovereignty of the people to such an extent that all senatus consulta for dispensing from the laws contained a provision for bringing the matter before the comitia. Gradually the custom of referring to the people ceased, and at last the provision to that effect was dropped from senatorial decrees. The result was that often a few senators, meeting in the Curia, voted away to acquaintances and relatives the valuable privilege of exemption from a law. The optimates induced a tribune of the plebs, P. Servilius Globulus, to intercede against the bill while it was being read to the assembly prior to the vote.