Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/346

334 town, which are amoug the richest in iodine of any known, the proportion being 4032 of iodine in 10,000 parts of water. They are much used by the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts. The little city of Ceneda is charmingly situated on the last slope of the hills inclined from west to east, and has the reputation of being especially healthy. The Emperor Berengarius held a court of justice here, when he gave by diploma to the bishop of Ceneda, which had its own body of statutes com piled in 1339 and published in 1G09, the jurisdiction of the whole territory lying between the rivers Piave and Livenza from the Alps to the sea. In the cathedral, a building of the middle of the last century on the site of an older one, there are some not very remarkable paintings of Palma Giovine, Bonifacio, and Tintoretto. The town hall has some good frescoes of Pomponio Amalteo in its &quot; loggia,&quot; and a curious series of portraits within of the bishops of Ceneda, and another of the Podestcis, with the arms of each. The origin of the city, which very numerous finds of urns, inscriptions, coins, lachrymatories, and other objects prove to have existed under the Romans, is uncertain. At the period of the Gothic and Lombard invasions it was a place of some military importance. Alaric fortified it strongly. The Emperor Houorius subse quently gave it with the title of county to one Marcellus. Attila devastated it in 450. The sovereignty of the district was the subject of long contests between the neighbouring counts of Camino and the bishops, with the gradual result of subjecting the city and its district to the republic of Venice, which, however, permitted the bishops and the ancient council of notables to exercise some rights of sovereignty even down to 1776. It should be added that Ceneda has recently changed its name to Vittorio. This absurd abnegation of its past history has had some little show of reason to excuse it. Ceneda and the neighbouring commune of Serravalle were for many generations hereditary enemies. When the province of Venice was restored to Italy it was determined, among other festive and fraternizing doings, that these two communes should henceforth form but one, to be known as Vittorio, an appellation which seems to have succeeded in supplanting the old historical name more entirely than usually occurs in similar cases.  CENSOR (from censere, to estimate), the title of two magistrates of the highest importance in the Roman republic. It was their duty to take a census of the citizens, to estimate their property and impose taxes in proportion to what each possessed, and to punish offences not only against morality, but against the conventional requirements of Roman custom. They took cognizance of bad cultiva tion of the land, of the carrying on of any occupation which was considered disgraceful, of luxuriousness, of celibacy, and of many other matters of a similar kind. If the offender was a senator, they might remove him from the senate ; if eques, they might take from him his horse, they might expel him from his tribe, and they might lower him to aerarian rank. There was, however, an appeal from their decisions to an assembly of the people ; and they could only punish a citizen for some definite fault, which they were bound to declare in their list. The censors also appointed the princeps senalus, and filled up all vacancies in the senate. At first this was done at their own discretion, but afterwards they were controlled by the lex Ovinia, which bound them to choose ex-magistrates in the order of their rank. The censors also let out the taxes to farm ; and they took charge of all public buildings, roads, and aqueducts, and undertook the construction of new public works. At first the duration of the censorship was five years, but in 433 B.C. the dictator Mamercinus made a law restricting it to a year and a half. Upon the death of either censor the other resigned, and a new election was held. Originally patricians alone were eligible ; but in 351 B.C. the plebeians were admitted. The censorship was instituted in 443 B.C.; and the office continued to the time of the emperors. Vespasian and his son took the title ; and the last who bore it was the brother of Constantine. The emperor generally assumed censorial power under the title of morum prcefecti.  CENSUS is now almost solely used to denote that enumeration of the people made at intervals in mo&t European countries, and in the United Kingdom and the British Colonies decennially. The term had its origin in Rome, where a group of the many functions performed by the high officer called censor received the name of census. An enumeration of the people was only one of them, but they were chiefly of a statistical character. They were especially directed to fiscal objects ; and it does not appear that the enumeration of the people was then deemed of value as a source of statistical knowledge which might influence morals and legislation. It was connected with the Servian constitution, which apportioned the rights and duties of citizens to the amount of property, dividing them into six classes, which were subdivided into centuries by a mixed ratio of wealth and numbers. Had the enumeration been deemed of value for any such other purposes, besides the adjustment of rights and obligations, as those for which statistical knowledge is now deemed so valuable, the notices preserved of the vast collection of statistical facts thus made would have been less scanty and meagre, and we should not have found it so impracticable to come to any conclusion about the population and extent of the city of Rome itself. The Roman census must have been minute and full. It indicated not only the number and respective classes of all free persons, but their domestic position as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters. The slaves and freedmen were indicated in connection with the possessions of the head of the house, and landed property was analyzed into several classes according to its character and produce. The important practical effect of the census caused it to be conducted at intervals generally so frequent as every fifth year. It was followed by a sacrifice of purification or lustration, whence the term of five years came to be designated a lustrum. There were highly penal consequences to the citizen who neglected his registration for the census, to whom as an unregistered person the name of incensus was given. From the mixed functions to which it was applied we have the word used among the Romans to signify the patrimony or property qualification of a parti cular grade as census senatorius and census equester; and we have it employed in later times to indicate taxation. Hence census dominicatus, implying a feudal tax to the superior, and census duplicatus, a double tax or feudal casualty ; and the word cense, used by old English writers, was abbreviated in modern use into cess. While the word census was thus applied to the taxation of the Middle Ages, it will readily be understood that in its modern sense it received no practical application, since neither taxation nor the adjustment of social rank required a numbering of the people ; and the statistic or economic ends of such a process were as little known as they had been to the Romans. Under the despotic Governments of the Continent, however, the tendency to central organiza tion for purposes of administration and police prepared the way for statistical inquiries into the numbers of the inhabitants of particular areas whenever there should occur an occasion for enumerating them. It was in Britain, with its abstinent Government and unrestrained people, that the want of population statistics became most flagrantly 