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With respect to power the tribunate has, from its origin, a double character. It possesses a negative control of the whole people (generally in the person of its magistrate) exercised in defence of the Plebs, and a positive authority within the plebeian community. The first power asserts itself in the right of veto, the second is shown in the power of eliciting resolutions (scita plebei or plebiscita) from the plebeian concilium. The first power, that of offering assistance (auxilium) to any Plebeian[362] who feels himself aggrieved by the decree of the magistrate, and suspending this decree by the exercise of the “veto,” was the raison d’être of the tribunate. The tribune was created to meet the consular imperium (contra consulare imperium),[363] and the fact that he could only exercise this power in person imposed on him certain obligations. The tribune might not stay a night without the walls, and the doors of his house were open day and night.[364] It was doubtless through the insufficiency of these presidents of the Plebs to cope with the demands for their assistance that their number was raised first to four (471 B.C.), and before the year 449 B.C. to ten[365]—changes which were ratified by the centuries and the Senate.