ating, a certain proportion of candidates; and it was his
custom to select one of these distinguished youths, to read his orations
or epistles in the assemblies of the senate. [147] The practice of
Augustus was imitated by succeeding princes; the occasional commission
was established as a permanent office; and the favored quaestor,
assuming a new and more illustrious character, alone survived the
suppression of his ancient and useless colleagues. [148] As the orations
which he composed in the name of the emperor, [149] acquired the force,
and, at length, the form, of absolute edicts, he was considered as the
representative of the legislative power, the oracle of the council, and
the original source of the civil jurisprudence. He was sometimes invited
to take his seat in the supreme judicature of the Imperial consistory,
with the Praetorian praefects, and the master of the offices; and he was
frequently requested to resolve the doubts of inferior judges: but as
he was not oppressed with a variety of subordinate business, his
leisure and talents were employed to cultivate that dignified style
of eloquence, which, in the corruption of taste and language, still
preserves the majesty of the Roman laws. [150] In some respects, the
office of the Imperial quaestor may be compared with that of a modern
chancellor; but the use of a great seal, which seems to have been
adopted by the illiterate barbarians, was never introduced to attest the
public acts of the emperors. 4. The extraordinary title of count of the
sacred largesses was bestowed on the treasurer-general of the revenue,
with the intention perhaps of inculcating, that every payment flowed
from the voluntary bounty of the monarch. To conceive the almost
infinite detail of the annual and daily expense of the civil and
military administration in every part of a great empire, would exceed
the powers of the most vigorous imagination.

The actual account employed several hundred persons, distributed into
eleven different offices, which were artfully contrived to examine and
control their respective operations. The multitude of these agents had
a natural tendency to increase; and it was more than once thought
expedient to dismiss to their native homes the useless supernumeraries,
who, deserting their honest labors, had pressed with too much eagerness
into the lucrative profession of the finances. [151] Twenty-nine
provincial receivers, of whom eighteen were honored with the titl