was created thus by election, but a successor, or Tanist,* was, during his lifetime, assigned to him by the same process; and as if the position alone of heir-apparent did not render him sufficiently formidable to the throne, the law, in the earlier ages, also, it is said, conferred upon him the right of being chief general of the army, and chief judge of the whole state or kingdom. For the succession to the minor thrones a similar provision was made: to every petty king a successor was, in like manner, appointed, with powers proportioned to those of his chief; and thus, in addition to the constant dissension of all these princes among themselvest each saw by his side an adult and powerful rival, chosen generally without any reference to his own choice or will; and, as mostly hap pens, even where the successor is so by hereditary right, forming an authorized rallyingpoint for the ambitious and disaffected.

So many contrivances, as they would seem, for discord, could not but prove successful. All the defects of the feudal system were here combined, without any of its atoning advantages. It is true that an executive composed of such divided and mutually thwarting powers must have left to the people a considerable portion of freedom; but it was a freedom, under its best aspects, stormy and insecure,, and which life was passed in struggling for, not in enjoying. The dynasts themselves, being, from their position, both subjects and rulers, were, by turns, tyrants and slaves: even the monarchy itself was often regarded but as a prize to the strongest; and faction pervaded all ranks, from the hovel to the supreme throne. Accordingly, as may be gathered from even the comparatively pacific events I have selected, commotion and bloodshed were, in those times, the ordinary course of public affairs. Among the numerous occupants of thrones, the tenure of authority and of life was alike brief; and it is computed that, of the supreme kings who wielded the sceptre, before the introduction of Christianity, not one seventh part died a natural death, the remaining sovereigns having been taken off in the field, or by murder. The same rivalry, the same temptations to violence, were in operation throughout all the minor sovereignties: every provincial king, every head of a sept, had his own peculiar sphere of turbulence, in which, on a smaller scale, the same scenes were enacted; in which the law furnished the materials of strife, and the sword alone was called in to decide it.

Among the many sources of this discord must not be forgotten those tributes, or supplies, which, in return for the subsidies granted to them by their superiors, the inferior princes were bound to furnish. This exchange of subsidy and tribute,-the latter being usually paid in cattle, clothes, utensils, and, frequently, military aid,‡—was carried on proportionably through all the descending scale of dynasties, and its mutual obligations enforced as strictly between the lord of the smallest rath and his dependents, as between the monarch and his subordinate kings. Among the various forms in which tribute was exacted, not the least oppressive were those periodical progresses of the monarch, during which he visited the courts of the different provincial kings, and was, together with his retinue, entertained, for a certain time, by each. Every inferior lord or chieftian assumed a similar privilege, and, at certain seasons, visiting from tenant to tenant, was maintained, with his followers, at their expense. This custom was called, in after-times, (by a name not, I suspect, of Irish origin,) coshering.

Though the acceptance of subsidy from the monarch implied an acknowledgment of subordination and submission, it was of a kind wholly different from that of the feoffees, in the feudal system, who, by the nature of their tenures, were subjected to military ser

* "Whoever knows any thing of Irish history will readily agree that an Irish Tanist of a royal family even after those of that quality were deprived of the judiciary power, and not always invested with the actual command of the army, was, notwithstanding, held in such high consideration, as to be esteemed nothing less than a secondary king. The title of Righ-damnha, meaning king in fieri, was generally given to the presumptive successor of the reigning king."-Dissert, on Laws of the Ancient Irish.

†The following is O'Flaherty's applausive view of this system:-" He (Selden) cannot produce an instance in all Europe of a more ancient, perfect, or better-established form of government than that of Ireland; where the sovereign power was concentred in one king, and the subaltern power, gradually descending from the five kings to the lowest classes of men, represents and exactly resembles the Hierarchy of the Celestial Christ, described in the verses addressed to the archangel Michael."-Ogyg., part i. book 1.

There is extant a book containing the laws of these different subsidies and tributes, called the Leabhar na Ceart, or Book of Rights, and attributed to St. Benin, the favourite disciple of St. Patrick. It is clear, however, from the corslets and suits of armour so profusely enumerated in the list of royal gifts, that these "State Laws of Subsidies," as Vallancey styles them, must have been of a much later date; not more ancient, probably, than those songs and tales bearing the name of the poet Oisin, in which a similar display of rich armour is prematurely introduced. An account of this curious volume may be found in the Trans. IbernoCelt. Soc., and in Vallancey's Dissert. on the Laws of the Ancient Irish.

That there was a degree of resemblance between the feudal system and the Irish, will appear from the description given by Mr. Hallam of the state of France at the time when Hugh Capet usurped the throne. "France," says this admirable historian, "was rather a collection of states partially allied to each other, than a single monarchy. The kingdom was as a great fief, or rather a bundle of fiefs, and the king little more than one of a number of feudal nobles, differing rather in dignity than in power from some of the rest.”— View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. There were, however, as I have shown above, essential

vice; whereas, in Ireland, the subordinate princes were entirely free and independent of those above them, holding their possessions under no condition of any service or homage whatsoever.* Even in France, the great feudatories, in many instances, did not hesitate to take arms against their sovereign; and still less scrupulous, it may be supposed, were the numerous free tenants of thrones under the Irish system.† Sufficient pretexts for withholding tribute from the monarch were seldom wanting to the factious; and by recourse to arms alone could the sovereign, in such cases, seek redress. On the eve, sometimes, of a battle, the tributaries failed in bringing up their promised aid; or, still worse, entered the field reluctantly, and, on the first attack, took flight.

Under any circumstances, so general and constant a state of warfare must, by rendering impossible the cultivation of the peaceful arts, prove fatal to the moral advancement of the people; but the civil and domestic nature of the feuds in which the Irish were constantly engaged, could not but render them, beyond all other species of warfare, demoralizing and degrading. To the invasion of a foreign land men march with a spirit of adventure, which throws an air of chivalry even around rapine and injustice; while they who resist, even to the death, any invasion of their own, are sure of enlisting the best feelings of human nature in their cause. But the sanguinary broils of a nation armed against itself have no one elevating principle to redeem them, and are inglorious alike in victory and defeat. Whatever gives dignity to other warfare was wanting in these personal, factious feuds. The peculiar bitterness attributed to family quarrels marks also the course of civil strife; and that flow of generous feeling which so often succeeds to fierce hostility between strangers, has rarely, if ever, been felt by parties of the same state who have been once arrayed in arms against each other. One of the worst results, indeed, of that system of law and government under which Ireland first started into political existence, and retained, in full vigour of abuse, for much more than a thousand years, was the constant obstacles which it presented to the growth of a public national spirit, by separating the mass of the people into mutually hostile tribes, and accustoming each to merge all thought of the general peace or welfare in its own factious views, or the gratification of private revenge.

That separate states may be so bound in federate union as to combine effectively for all the great purposes of peace and war, is sufficiently proved by more than one historical instance. But there was no such form or principle of cohesion in the members of the Irish pentarchy. The interposing power assigned, theoretically, to the monarch, became of little effect in practice, and, in moments of peculiar violence, when most wanted, was always least efficient. Part of the business, we are told, of the triennial assemblies held at Tara was to hear appeals against tyrannical princes, and interpose for the redress of wrongs. But even granting these conventions to have been held regularly, which appears more than doubtful, it is plain that in the rapid succession of daily scenes of blood which stained the Irish annals, an assembly convened but once in every three years must have exercised but a tardy and soon-forgotten influence.

Such a course of discord and faction, prolonged, as it was, through centuries, could not fail to affect materially the general character of the nation, and to lay deep the seeds of future humiliation and weakness. A people divided thus among themselves must have been, at all times, a ready prey for the invader; and the fatal consequences of such disunion were shown most lamentably, a few centuries after this period, when, as will be seen, by Irish assistance alone were the Danish marauders enabled to preserve the footing they so long and so ruinously held in the country. By the same causes, though existing, perhaps,

differences between the two systems; and Mr. Hallam himself, in speaking of the constitution of ancient Ire. land, remarks that the relations borne by the different ranks of chieftains to each other and to the crown, may only loosely be called federal."-Constitut. Hist vol. iii.

This principle was retained, even after the subjection of the country to the English. "The Irish lords," says Sir J Davis, "did only promise to become tributary to Henry II., and such as pay tribute are not pro. perly subjects, but sovereigns."

According to Vallancey, even the monarch himself was no more exempt from attack than the rest of his royal brethren:-" Most certain it is, that the provincial kings and other sovereigns never acknowledged any supreme right in these pretenders to monarchy, but always asserted their own independency against them at the point of the sword, as appears most glaringly from the Irish Annals."-See Vallancey's clever Dissertation on the Laws of the Ancient Irish, written by him at the commencement of his career, before the Orientalism of our Irish antiquities had taken such a disturbing hold of his imagination.

Leland, Preliminary Discourse.

If we may believe O'Halloran, the meetings of the great Fes of Teamor were interrupted even for centu. ries. In speaking of the convention held in the reign of Ugony the Great, he says, "This, by the by, is the first instance for above two centuries of the meeting of the Feis Tamarach, or General Convention of the Estates of the Kingdom at Tara, except such a one as was appointed by Ciombhaoth, of which I have not sufficient authority positively to affirm."-Vol. ii. chap. v.

The annals of the country bear unanimous testimony to the melancholy truth, that in these plundering expeditions they (the Danes) were frequently aided by some of the native Irish princes, who, either anxions to diminish the preponderating power of some neighbouring chieftain, or desirous to revenge some real or

in a much less aggravated degree, were the Celts, both of Britain and Gaul, brought so easily under the dominion of the Romans. The politic use to which the rival factions among the Gauls might be turned, could not escape the acute observation of Cæsar; and history, which has left untold the name of the recreant Irishman who, as we have seen, proffered his treasonable services in the camp of Agricola, has, with less charity, recorded that of the British chief Mandubratius, who, from motives of mere personal revenge, invited Cæsar into Britain.* Even in the earliest periods of Irish history may be detected some traces of this faithless spirit, which internal dissensions and mutual distrust are sure to generate among a people; and the indistinct story of the flight of Labhra, a Leinster prince, into Gaul, and his return from thence at the head of Gaulish troops, sufficiently intimates that such appeals to foreign intervention were, even in Agricola's time, not new. While such were the evils arising from the system according to which power was distributed, no less mischiefs flowed from the laws which regulated the distribution of property. In all cases where property was connected with chieftainry, the right of succession was regulated in the same manner as that of the succession to the throne. During the lifetime of the reigning chief, some person of the sept, his brother, son, or cousin, was appointed by election to succeed him; and lands devolved in this manner were, like the inheritance of the crown, exempt from partition. To the chosen successors of kings the title of Roydamna was in general applied; but the person appointed to succeed one of the inferior chiefs was always called a Tanist. Wherever inheritances were not connected with either royalty or chieftainry, their descent was regulated by the custom of Gavelkind,—a usage common to both Gothic and Celtic nations,—and the mode in which property was partitioned and re-partitioned under this law, threw a constant uncertainty round its tenure, and in time frittered away its substance.

On the death of the Cean Finné, or head of a sept, his successor, who became such not by inheritance, but by election, or strong hand, assembled all the males of the sept, and divided the lands, at his discretion, between them. Whenever any of these inferior tenants died, the sept was again called together, and their several possessions being all thrown into hotch-potch, a new partition of all was made; in which the son of him who had died did not receive the portion his father had possessed, but a share of the whole was, according to seniority, allotted to every male of the sept. As soon as another tenant died, the tenure of the property was again disturbed, and the same process of partition, in the same invariable mode, repeated. It appears that to the Cean Finne, or head of the family, was reserved a chief rent on the gavelled lands, which maintained his power and influence over the members of the sept; and in the event of any of them forfeiting or dying without issue, secured a reversion to him of the property of the gavel lands so held.t By the custom of Gavelkind, as it existed among the Irish, females of every degree were precluded from the inheritance; while illegitimate sons were equally entitled with the legitimate to their portions of the land. The exclusion of females from inheritance,—a law characteristic of those times, when lands were won and held on condition of military service alone, was common to the Irish with most other early nations as well Teutons as Celts; though it is a mistake to suppose that all the Teutonic tribes adopted it.|| The

imaginary insult received, or, perhaps, willing to share in the spoils of an opulent neighbour, were always forward to join the common enemy."-O'Reilly, on the Brehon Laws, Trans. R. I. A vol. xiv.

According to the etymologist Baxter, the name of Mandubratius signifies "the Betrayer of his Country," and was affixed to this chieftain, in consequence of his treason:-"Inde populari Cassivelanorum convicio, Mandubratur tanquam Patria proditor appellatus est.

"It is also said, that when the gavel was made by the father, after his death the equal share which he allotted to himself, went to the eldest son, according to the maxim of the patriarchs, who allowed a double proportion to the first born. And, lastly, like the twin tenure of Kent, it was not subject to escheat for treason or felony."-D'Alton, Essay on the Antiquities of Ireland.

Consistently with his notion that the Britons and the Irish were derived from the same stock, the Historian of Manchester represents this custom as existing also in Britain; but at the same time, for this, as well as for many other Irish usages, which he endeavours to prove common to both countries, refers to evidence relating to Ireland alone. It is difficult, indeed, upon any point, to place much faith in an historian who, to prove that the descent of the crown among the Britons flowed in the course of hereditary and lineal succession, tells us gravely that "Trenmor, Trathal, Comhal and Fingal-father, son, grandson, and great-grandson-successively inherited the monarchy of Morven for their patrimony."-Hist. of Manchester, book I. chap. viii. sect. 2.

Mr. O'Reilly (Essay on the Brehon Laws) denies that females in Ireland were excluded from the inheritance of lands; but unfortunately adduces no authority in support of his assertion. If it would not extend this Essay (he says) to an unreasonable length, examples might be given from the ancient Irish laws sufficient to prove that women exercised the right of chiefry over lands properly their own, and had a power to dispose of all their chattel property at their pleasure." He afterwards adds," But supposing that Irish women did not enjoy landed property, the same must be said of the women of several other ancient nations." This sort of reversionary successor resembles, in some respects, the adseititious Cæsars, or presumptive heirs of the imperial office, among the Romans.

"In a word," says General Vallaneey, "all the Teutonic or German nations excluded the daughters from sharing with their brothers or other heirs male in the father's landed inheritance." This is not, however, the In the Burgundian law, one of the most ancient codes of the barbarians, is the following passage:

case.

admission of natural children, however, to a legal right of inheritance, may be pronounced a custom peculiar to Ireland. General Vallancey, in his zeal to ennoble all that is connected with Irish antiquity, endeavours to show that this custom is of patriarchal origin, citing, as his only instance, that of the children of Jacob by the handmaids of his wives Leah and Rachel, who enjoyed, among the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, a station equal to that of the children of his solemnly married wives. But the instance, besides being a solitary one, as well as attended with peculiar circumstances, is by no means sufficient to prove that such was the patriarchal custom; while, on the other hand, the significant act of Abraham, in presenting only gifts to his natural children, and separating them from his son Isaac, marks, as definitely as could be required, the distinction then drawn between legitimate and illegitimate children.*

As, in all communities, property is the pervading cement of society, a state of things such as has been just described, in which its tenure was kept, from day to day, uncertain, and its relations constantly disturbed, was perhaps the least favourable that the most perverted ingenuity could have devised, for either the encouragement of civilization or the maintenance of peace. The election of a Tanist, too, with no more definite qualifications prescribed than that he should be chosen from among the oldest and most worthy of the sept, opened, whenever it occurred, as fertile a source of contention and rivalry as a people, ready at all times for such excitement, could desire. However great the advantages attending an equal division of descendible property, in communities advanced sufficiently in habits of industry to be able to profit by those advantages, the effect of such a custom among a people like the Irish, the great bulk of whom were in an uncivilized state, was evidently but to nurse in them that disposition to idleness which was one of the main sources of their evils, and to add to their other immunities from moral restraint, the want of that powerful influence which superior wealth must always enable its possessor to exercise. Had there been any certainty in the tenure of the property, when once divided, most of the evils attending the practice might have been escaped. But the new partition of all the lands, whenever a death occurred in the sept, and the frequent removal or translation of the inferior tenants from one portion to another, produced such uncertainty in the tenure of all possessions, as made men reckless of the future, and completely palsied every aim of honest industry and enterprise. By the habits of idleness thus engendered, the minds of the great mass of the people were left vacant and restless, to seek employment for themselves in mischief, and follow those impulses of wild and ungoverned passion, of which their natures were so susceptible.

One of the worst political consequences of these laws of property was, that, by their means, the division of the people into tribes or clans, so natural in the first infancy of society, was confirmed and perpetuated. The very warmth and fidelity with which the members of each sept combined among themselves, but the more alienated them from every part of the community, and proportionably diminished their regard for the general welfare.

Another evil of the social system, under such laws, was the false pride that could not fail to be engendered by that sort of mock kingship, that mimic sovereignty, which pervaded the whole descending scale of their grandees, down to the Ruler of a small Rath, or even the possessor of a few acres, who, as Sir John Davies says, "termed himself a Lord, and his portion of land his country." As even the lowest of these petty potentates would have considered it degrading to follow any calling or trade, a multitude of poor and proud spirits were left to ferment in idleness; and, there being but little vent, in foreign warfare, for such restlessness, till towards the decline of the Roman power in

Inter Burgundiones id volumus custodiri, ut si quis filium non reliquerit, in loco filii filia in patris matrisque hereditate succeedat." The reader will find this, and other instances to the same purpose, cited in an able article on Mr. Hallam's Middle Ages, Edin. Review, No. lix.

* It is asserted by Eustathius, that, among the Greeks, as low as the time of the Trojan war, illegitimate children stood on equal grounds of favour with the legitimate; but, except occasionally, as in such instances as that of Teucer, where the high rank of both parents throws a lustre round the offence, or in cases where a god was called in to bear the burden of the offspring, there appears, among the Greeks, to have been as much disgrace attached to illegitimacy, as among any other people. So far were their laws from allowing children of this description to inherit, that, in fixing the utmost amount of money which it was lawful for a father, at any time, to give them, it was strictly provided that such sum could only be given during his life

time.

In speaking of the aunual partition of their lands, by the ancient Germans, as described by Cæsar (lib. vi cap. 22..) Sir F. Palgrave says, “If, as we are told by Cæsar, the Germans wished to discourage agriculture and civilization, the means were excellently adapted to the end; and to understand the rural economy of the barbaric nations, we must always keep in mind that their habitations were merely encampments upon the land. Instead of firm and permanent mansions, constituting not only the wealth, but the defence of the wealth of the owner, we must view the Teuton and the Celt dwelling in wattled hovels and turf-built sheelings, which could be raised in the course of a night, and abandoned without regret or sacrifice, when the partition of the district compelled every inhabitant to accept a new domicile. Such was the state of Ireland." -Vol. i. chap. 3.

Britain, it expended itself in the struggles of domestic faction and fierce civil broils. Nor was it only by the relative position of the different classes of the country, but by that also of the different races which inhabited it, that the aliment of this false pride was so abundantly ministered. The same barbarous right of conquest by which the Spartans held their helots in bondage, was claimed and exercised by the Scotic or dominant caste of Ireland, not merely over the great mass of the population, but also over the remains of the earliest colonists-the Belgians and Damnonians. Leaving to the descendants of these ancient people only the mechanic and servile occupations, their masters reserved to themselves such employments as would not degrade their high original; and it was not till the reign of Tuathal, as we have seen, when a committee, empowered by a general assembly of the states, took the management of the trade and manufactures into their care, that any of the ruling caste condescended to employ themselves in such pursuits. But, besides this subject, or conquered class, whose position, in relation to their Scotic masters, corresponded, in some respects, with that of the Coloni among the Franks, and the Ceorls among the Anglo-Saxons, there were also purchased slaves, still lower, of course, in the social scale, and forming an article of regular commerce among the Irish, both at this period and for many centuries after. We shall see that St. Patrick, whom, as I have already stated, the soldiers of the monarch Nial carried off as a captive from the coast of Armoric Gaul, was, on his arrival in Ireland, sold as a common slave.

It has been already remarked that the system of polity maintained in Ireland bore, in many respects, a resemblance to the feudal; and some of those writers who contend for a northern colonization of this country, have referred to the apparently Gothic character of her institutions, as a confirmation of their opinion. In all probability, however, the elements of what is called the feudal system had existed in Ireland, as well as in Britain and Gaul, many ages before even the oldest date usually assigned to the first introduction of feudal law into Europe; being traceable, perhaps, even to the landing of the first colonies on these shores, when, in parcelling out their new territory, and providing for its defence, there would naturally be established, between the leaders and followers, in such an enterprise, those relations of fealty and protection, of service and reward, which the common object they were alike engaged in would necessarily call forth, and in which the principle and the rudiments of the feudal policy would be found. It has been shown by Montesquieu, from the law of the Burgundians, that when that Vandalic nation first entered Gaul, they found the tenure of land by service already existing among the people.*

Little doubt, therefore, as there is of a Scythic or Gothic colony having, about a century or two before our era, gained possession of Ireland, no evidence thereof is to be looked for in the laws and usages of that country, which, on the contrary, bear impressed on them the marks of Celtic antiquity; having existed, perhaps, through at least as many centuries before the coming of St. Patrick, as they are known to have continued to exist after that event, and with scarcely a shadow of change.

In attempting to estimate the probable degree of civilization which the people of Ireland, in those early ages, may have attained, it will be found that the picture of their state transmitted to us, as well in their own annals as in the representations of others, is made up of direct contrasts; and that there is not a feature in their history, indicative of an advance in social refinement, that is not counteracted by some other stamped with the strongest impress of barbarism. It is only by compounding between these two opposite extremes, that a just medium can be attained, and that the true, or at least probable, state of the case, can be collected from such evidence.

The double aspect, indeed, under which the ancient character of the country thus glimmers upon us, through the mists of time, has divided the writers who treat of her antiquities into two directly opposite parties; and as if even the history of Ireland was fated to be made a subject of faction, the contest has been carried on by the respective disputants, with a degree of vehemence and even bitterness which, on a question relating to personages and events so far removed into past ages, appears not a little extraordinary. While, on the one side, the warm zealots in the cause of Ireland exalt to such a height the standard of her early civilization, as to place it on a level with that of the proudest states of antiquity,-describing the sumptuous palaces of her kings, the grand assemblies

"Il est dit, dans la loi des Bourguignons, que quand ces peuples établirent dans les Gaules, ils recurent les deux ters des terres, et le tiers des serfs. La servitude de la glebe étoit donc établie dans cette partie de la Gaule avant l'entrée des Bourguignons."-Liv. xxx. chap. 10.

The character of the Issedones, a people of antiquity mentioned by Herodotus, was, in like manner, represented in perfectly different aspects to the world. While, like the ancient Irish, they were accused of feeding on the flesh of their parents, there are mentioned qualities belonging to them, characteristic of a refined people. "They venerate justice," says Herodotus," and allow their females to enjoy equal authority with the men. It is in the same book of his work where he attributes to them this mark of social refine. ment, that he tells us they cooked and ate their dead parents.