The functions also of the governors were practically restricted.

The superintendence of the administration of justice and the administrative control of the communities remained in their hands; but their command was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants associated with the governor,( 84) and the raising of the taxes was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially to imperial officials,( 85) so that the governor was thenceforward surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was absolutely dependent on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline.
While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if they were members of a gang of robbers despatched to levy contributions, the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak against the strong; and, instead of the previous worse than useless control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch.
The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar had already in his first consulate made more stringent, was applied by him against the chief commandants in the provinces with an inexorable severity going even beyond its letter; and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time were wont to atone.
Regulation of Burdens The extraordinary public burdens were reduced to the right proportion and the actual necessity; the ordinary burdens were materially lessened.
We have already mentioned the comprehensive regulation of taxation;( 86) the extension of the exemptions from tribute, the general lowering of the direct taxes, the limitation of the system of -decumae- to Africa and Sardinia, the complete setting aside of middlemen in the collection of the direct taxes, were most beneficial reforms for the provincials.
That Caesar after the example of one of his greatest democratic predecessors, Sertorius,( 87) wished to free the subjects from the burden of quartering troops and to insist on the soldiers erecting for themselves permanent encampments resembling towns, cannot indeed be proved; but he was, at least after he had exchanged the part of pretender for that of king, not the man to abandon the subject to the soldier; and it was in keeping with his spirit, when the heirs of his policy created such military camps, and then converted them into towns which formed rallying-points for Italian civilization amidst the barbarian frontier districts.
Influence on the Capitalist System It was a task far more difficult than the checking of official irregularities, to deliver the provincials from the oppressive ascendency of Roman capital.

Its power could not be directly broken without applying means which were still more dangerous than the evil; the government could for the time being abolish only isolated abuses-- as when Caesar for instance prohibited the employment of the title of state-envoy for financial purposes--and meet manifest acts of violence and palpable usury by a sharp application of the general penal laws and of the laws as to usury, which extended also to the provinces;( 88) but a more radical cure of the evil was only to be expected from the reviving prosperity of the provincials under a better administration.

Temporary enactments, to relieve the insolvency of particular provinces, had been issued on several occasions in recent times.

Caesar himself had in 694 when governor of Further Spain assigned to the creditors two thirds of the income of their debtors in order to pay themselves from that source.