an admirable basis for the growth of Imperial power, for it gave him authority in two crucial areas finance and law Paul Muad'Dib is said to have reminded the Landstaad that the Padishah emperor advised it to "control the coinage and the courts-let the rabble have the rest' We are not sure to which emperor he referred, but that philosophy certainly characterized Corrmo rule Legally the emperor was recognized by the Treaty of Comn as superior to "any and all ' of the states of the Landsraad This legal recognition of the emperor's power was later to provide the foundation for the emperor's claim to make law himself, to serve as a judge and to grant power to the nobles of the Great Houses Financially the new emperor was granted authority by the treaty to levy taxes on the states which comprised die Landsraad Two were soon instituted the tribute, a money tax on die income of the provinces, and support levies, meant to be used for the purpose of "maintaining die peace and seen nty of the realm " This included the support of the Imperial armed forces, and the tax could be paid either in cash or in recruits for the emperor's service None of the signatories of the Treaty of Comn expected these powers to transform themselves into the Imperial bureaucracy which would exist some centimes later and, in fact die Imperial government which emerged di rectiy from the treaty was as deceptively simple as the document The Great Houses were permitted to keep their own troops sufficient for control of men: territories and defense against their neighbors This accom phshed two ends In the first place, it re moved from the Imperial House the burden of garrisoning every part of the empire More than mat, though, it recognized the nature of tbe Great Houses to expand at one another's expense and saw to it that they retained the means to do so An effort to impose total peace upon the empire would not only have been foreign to the nature of House Comno it would also have been doomed to failure Perhaps no other action could have so united the Great Houses as an attempt to deny them the right to make war upon their fellows Only an Imperial power utterly secure in its own strength could have nsked such a settlement House Comno with the military force of the Sardaukar was such a power The earliest administrative division of the empire was the province the Imperial equiva lent of a district within the system of the Landsraad a province would include two or more solar systems, Each province was assessed an annual tribute Collection was in the local currencies of each world and that tribute was assessed by the House Corrmo on the basis of records of the provincial income submitted by the Great Houses of the province These reports were checked against those produced by Imperial financial agents known as correctores several of whom were stationed in each province These func tionanes not only checked the records of the Great Houses they also supplemented their information with reports furnished by pnvate agents-financial spies These agents ulti mately would be organized into the Imperial Fiscal Intelligence the infamous 1FI The beginnings of the Imperial iegal sys tern can be traced to the correctores powers in the earlv reigns of the Impend] House Shortly before the Great Financial Synod in the very first years of the reign of Saudir I the correctors were granted the authority to decide cases with tax implications subject to appeal to the emperor Simple as this change seemed it represented the intrusion of the authority of the emperor into the regional governments of the Great Houses Since any case with financial effect could have tax implications virtually any case could be brought before the correctores Few cases did not affect the participants monetarily This technique began to circumvent the local judi cial system on many planets The only check lay in the attitudes of the correctores not in any principles of kw IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 334 IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION In addition to the matter of financial cases, a new category of crime developed: acts against the emperor or his government.