CENSOR. I. In ancient Rome, the title of the two Roman officials who presided over the census (from Lat. censere, assess, estimate), the registration of individual citizens for the purpose of determining the duties which they owed to the community. This idea of "discretionary power" was never entirely lost; although it came to be intimately associated with the appreciation of morals. The censorship was the Roman manifestation of the state control of conduct.
The office was instituted in 443 B.C. to relieve the consuls of the duties of registration. The election always took place in the Comitia Centuriata (see COMITIA). The censorship, although lacking the imperium, was one of the higher magistracies. and was regarded as the crown of a political career. It was an irre sponsible office; and the only limitations on its powers were the restriction of tenure to a year and a half, and the restraint im posed on each censor by the fact that no act of his was valid without the assent of his colleague.
The original functions of the censors were (I) the registration of citizens in the state-divisions, such as tribes and centuries; (2) the taxation of such citizens based on an estimate of their property; (3) the right of exclusion from public functions on moral grounds, known as the regimen morum; (4) the solemn act of purification (lustrum) which closed the census. Two other functions were subsequently added: (5) the selection of the senate (lectio senatus, see SENATE), and (6) certain financial duties such as the leasing of the contracts for tax-collecting and for the repair of public buildings. The census involved a de tailed examination of the citizen body as represented by the heads of families. In connection with this review the censors published their edicts stating the moral rules they intended to enforce. Disqualification might be the result of offences in private relations or in public life. Certain kinds of employment (e.g., acting) caused a stigma. In f amia, the general name for the penal ties inflicted by the censors, varied in degree. A senator might lose his seat, a citizen his place in tribe and century, and so his vote. All disabilities inflicted by one pair of censors might be removed by their successors.
The censorship lasted as long as the republic; and it was only suspended, not abolished, during the principate. Although the princeps exercised censorial functions he was seldom censor. Yet the office itself was held by Claudius and Vespasian. Domitian assumed the title of life censor, but he was not followed.
Council of Censors, in American constitutional history, is the name given to a council provided by the constitution of Penn sylvania from 1776 to 179o, and by the constitution of Vermont from 1777 to 187o. Under both constitutions the council of cen sors was elected once in seven years, for the purpose of enquiring into the working of the governmental departments, the conduct of the state officers, and the working of the laws, and as to whether the constitution had been violated in any particular. The Ver mont council of censors, limited in number to thirteen, had power, if they thought the constitution required amending in any par ticular, to call a convention for the purpose. A convention sum moned by the council in 187o amended the constitution by abolish ing the censors.
For the censorship of the press, see PRESS LAWS ; for the censorship of plays, THEATRE: Law, and LORD CHAMBERLAIN.