To this council were intrusted powers less extensive in theory than those of the Areopagus, but far more actively exerted.

Its members inspected the fleet (when a fleet was afterward established)--they appointed jailers of prisons -- they examined the accounts of magistrates at the termination of their office; these were minor duties; to them was allotted also an authority in other departments of a much higher and more complicated nature.

To them was given the dark and fearful extent of power which enabled them to examine and to punish persons accused of offences unspecified by any peculiar law [212]--an ordinance than which, had less attention been paid to popular control, the wildest ambition of despotism would have required no broader base for its designs.

A power to punish crimes unspecified by law is a power above law, and ignorance or corruption may easily distort innocence itself into crime.

But the main duty of the Four Hundred was to prepare the laws to be submitted to the assembly of the people--the great popular tribunal which we are about presently to consider.