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And, as the consuls nominated their delegates, so the regal tradition was continued which gave them the nomination of their council of state, the Senate. In their choice of members they were legally as unfettered as the king had been, and could summon new members or omit to summon those already on the list.[332] So far as law went, the personnel of the Senate might now be changed annually. But custom must have been stronger than law. The body had gained a definiteness in its constitution, based on its representative character and probably on actual life-membership, which could not be easily destroyed, and the consul had a colleague at his side to check any attempt at capricious removal or selection. The short tenure of office must already have made a magistrate unwilling to exercise a power which might be so easily turned against himself in the near future. The discretionary power of the magistrate would have made the choice of Plebeians possible, now that they were possessed of all the essential rights of full citizenship;[333] but it does not appear that this choice could have been often, if ever, exercised. The patrician clans had a close hereditary connexion with the Senate; the interregnum, which was the transmission of auspices by the patres, had long been one of its privileges, and the prejudices of the patrician magistracy would hardly have allowed it to dip into the inferior order for councillors. If there be any truth in the story that, on the abolition of the monarchy, the thinned ranks of the patres were again raised to 300 by the inclusion of persons specially enrolled (adlecti or conscripti),[334] these added members were probably, like their predecessors, patrician. This large increase (placed by some at 164 members) gave rise to a transitory distinction between the older members and the new members, which—expressed in the formula of summons “qui patres, qui conscripti (estis)”—was finally merged in the general appellation of “conscript fathers.”[335] The expression may have originated with the abandonment or modification of some original principle of selection; but, if conscripti be taken to apply wholly to Plebeians, some date later than the commencement of the Republic must be accepted for the origin of the term.[336]