Once a proces-verbal had been submitted, a Court of the First Instance would be convened, presided over by a representative of the provincial governor and a representative of the Sysselraad secretary, each of whom heard no other case. Only if both these officials agreed that an offense against the Imperium had been committed would the matter be sent to the Imperial governor for judgment. His decision could then be appealed through the ordinary Imperial system. There were stiff penalties for accusers whose case failed to be submitted to the governor by the two-man Court of First Instance, and these officials were mandated to bar all frivolous matters or any cases which used the Imperial system to settle private quarrels. Thus, the number of cases heard by the Imperial government declined drastically. This change also had the effect of removing from planetary level all Imperial cases except those of a financial nature. These financial cases, which had in part begun the problem, were also strictly controlled. The power of the correctores was limited so that they could only hear cases directly bearing upon the taxes paid during the previous five years. In the event that such cases proved to involve deliberate fraud of the Imperial treasury recourse to the emperor's justice was sought, and then by the route of the proces-verbal, These reforms removed the Imperial government from the administration of the planets, where Jt had begun to make senous inroads into the powers of the Great Houses. It reestablished the early principle of the empire, that House Corrino was to stay out of the government of the Great Houses insofar as possible. The policy had two benefits: it retained the economic principles of keeping the burden of government on the shoulders of the Great Houses; in spite of this, it met with the approval of the Great Houses because the results decieased Imperial interference in their powers. These results had great future significance. If the trends in government had been allowed to continue, the Imperial government might have swallowed the Landsraad and the local governments of the Great Houses; there might have been civil war between House Corrino and the Landsraad, with like outcome: the Imperial house left as the only power in the IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 335 IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION inhabited worlds It is unlikely that the Imperial House could have maintained a stable govern ment without the assistance of the Great Houses, the Landsraad, and the Guild The burdens of direct control of such a vast area and number of worlds would have proved too great in the end, no matter how autocrat ic and powerful the rulers The Impenam might have lasted for centuries, but not for millennia The simple system of the Treaty of Comno proved adequate for the first centime* of the Impenum But with the rapid expansion of the Impenum which followed upoa the creation of CHOAM and the beginning of the Guild monopoly, tins system was strained beyond tolerance The number of worlds m the Impenum, in the end, exceeded 30,000 more than double the number that the emperor had ruled pnor to the Great Financial Synod Under such eircamstances, the system of administration that obtained after the Treaty of Comn was unable to