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 was clearly invalid against the particular potestas exercised at the census, although the obnuntiatio could be employed against the summons of the people to the census and the lustrum, as against any other contio.

(2) The limitation of tenure to eighteen months caused a break in the continuity of the magistracy, and was a symbol that the office was merely occasional. The censorial ordinances were valid for the whole quinquennial period of the lustrum, but, whatever may have been the original intention of the limitation of tenure, it was continued as an effective guarantee against such enormous powers being exercised for a continuous period of four or five years.

(3) Re-election to the censorship was forbidden, for a continuous moral control exercised by the same men would have been intolerable.

(4) The collegiate principle operated here as in other offices, but nowhere was the check of the veto more necessary and more healthy than in its influence on the arbitrary moral judgments of the censors. Without it the Senate might have been packed by a single man, and degradation from the highest positions and on the scantiest evidence might have been due to caprice, and followed by the unpopularity which divided responsibility renders less intense. The collegiate relation was, indeed, closer in this than in any other magistracy. Its holders must be elected together, the name of the singly-appointed censor not being returned; and, whether from grounds of convenience or