Viceroyalties and Captaincies-General were divided into provinces, each of which was ruled by a royal governor. When the Spaniards permanently occupied a new region their first step was to found a city and organise a municipal government. Like the Romans, they knew no other unit of political structure. The governing body was called a Cabildo and consisted of from six to twelve members who held office for life. It conducted the ordinary judicial and civil administration through officers selected by itself and from its own members. Though the governor was _ex-officio_ president of this body, and although its members had bought their places, they were not mere figureheads to register his will. Limited though their functions were, they represented the time-honoured governmental form into which Spaniards had always crystallised, and the Creoles could not be prevented from obtaining a preponderant influence in them. Throughout colonial times they represented local and Creole interests and operated continually as a check to the aggression of the military governors. The territorial jurisdiction of a municipality was usually ill-defined. Indeed, as a rule, in the days of settlement it extended in every direction until the claim of another city was encountered, and the terms "city" and "province," were, therefore, usually synonymous. As population grew denser new cities were founded which as municipalities were independent of the capital town, but they were not necessarily separated from the original province. The Cabildo of the capital of a province bore a peculiar relation to the royal governor, and often tried to exercise a control over the affairs of the whole province, deeming themselves his associates and the sharers of the functions he exercised, outside of its own boundaries, as well as within them. This assumption was favoured by the fact that no general body representing all the cities of a province existed, nor any constitutional machinery by which they could act in common.