occurs the equivalent of the motto to the Edinburgh Review.

"Index damnatur cum nocens absol

vitur."

The literal translation of the Irish is

"He who lets a criminal escape is himself a culprit."

He decreed that Nuadh should be put to death, prophecying at the same time that he would die in a spirit of true repentance, and should obtain salvation. A conference was then held, and Laeghaire said—

"It is necessary for you, O men of Erin, that every other law should be settled as well as this.' 'It is better to do so,' said Patrick. It was then that all the professors of the sciences in Erin were assembled, and each of them exhibited his art before Patrick in the presence of every chief in

Erin.

"What did not clash with the Word of God in the Written Law, and in the New Testament, and with the consciences of the believers, was confirmed in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick, and by the ecclesiastics, and by the chieftains of Erin. . . And this is the Senchus Mor.

"Nine persons were appointed to arrange this book, viz., Patrick, and Benin, and Cairnech, three bishops; Laeghaire, and Corc, and Daire, three kings; Rossa, i.e., MacTrechim, and Dubhthach, i.e., a doctor of the Berla Feine,* and Fergus, ie., a poet.

66

'Nopir (Nofis) therefore is the name of this book which they arranged, i.e., 'the knowledge of nine persons,' and we have the proof of this above.

This is the Cain Patraic, and no hu

man Brehon of the Gaël is able to abro

gate any thing that is found in the Senchus

Mor."

It will be recollected that the above quotations are from the introduction

to the body of laws. This introduction is not so old (though very ancient) as the compilation itself, but is more interesting to the general reader, as it is intelligible, which is more than can be said of some portions of the "Law of Distress" for debt or damage, the chief subject of the volume.

The author of this part of the work, tells us that before the coming of Patrick, only three classes of persons were allowed to speak in public in Erin, viz., a chronicler to relate events and tell stories, a poet to eulogize and satirize, and a Brehon to pass sentence from the precedents and commentaries. From the time of Amergin mentioned above, the poets were the deciders of cases till a certain contention arose at Emania,‡ between Feirchertne and Neidhe for the sage's gown of Neidhe's father, whose office had become vacant by his death. So transcendental was the language used on that occasion by the poetic arbiters that the chieftains were not certain what award they had made.

"These men,' said the chieftains, have their judgments and their knowledge to themselves. We do not in the first place understand what they say.' 'It is evidently the case,' said Conchobar (King Connor). All shall partake in it from this day forth, but the part of it which is fit for these poets shall not be taken from them; each shall have his share of it.'"

6

Besides reducing the poets' privileges within proper limits, King Connor's parliament (say in the first years of the Christian era) settled on the just number of breathings (about eighteen to the minute) that should be allowed to each pleader at a time. The ancients were not without some mother wit of their own.

As there was no absolute necessity for paid advocates, and as there seems hon's decision, bribery to the judge to have been no appeal from the Bremight have been more than a suspiHowever, those

Icion in some cases. Brehons, not naturally upright, were kept in wholesome awe of doing injustice by a few traditional examples

*The most ancient form of Irish.

† Patrick's Law.

of their predecessors being condignly punished for selling justice.

Sen Mac Aige was afflicted with blotches on his cheeks when he betrayed his trust, and there they remained till he undid his evil work. When Fachtna passed a hasty or wrong judgment the fruit fell off the trees, and the cows refused milk to their calves. Sencha Mac Aillila had a wholesome fear of passing a false judgment for the first fixed three permanent blotches on his countenance. Moran possessed a very useful collar, for if he began to wander from the true record it tightened in a very disagreeable manner round his neck. It was preserved carefully at Tara, and when later Brehons had a suspected witness under examination there needed only a hint of adorning his neck with the Joradh Morain to keep him in the way of true evidence.

The writer of the introduction did not neglect the privileges and obligation of the various grades even of the story-tellers. The Ollamh's memory was enriched with his seven times fifty stories; the Anruth's with thrice fifty and half fifty; the Cli remembered eighty, the Cana sixty, the Dos fifty, the Mac Fuirmidh forty, the Fochluc thirty, and the Drisac twenty. The poor Taman could only tell ten, and the Ollaire of still worse memory soon wearied his hearers; he had only seven.

The Gaël, though not so devoted to triads as their distant relatives, the Cymry, did not entirely neglect them. Among them were the three periods at which the world dies, the period of a plague, of a general war, and of the dissolution of verbal contracts.

With respect to the "honor price" of the classes the Senchus was elaborately minute. The law adjudged the same ransom or eric for the king, the bishop, the poet possessed of the power of improvisation, and the hospitable farmer who owned the everfull caldron.*

Those contracts which were not judged binding in their nature were five, viz., that of a labourer without his chief, of a monk without his

abbot, of the son without his father, of a woman without her husband, and the contract of a silly or mad person under any circumstances.

The dignities of a territory liable to degradation were four, a false judging king, a stumbling bishop, a fraudulent poet, and an unworthy chieftain. Worthiness and property entitled an individual to his full honor price; worthiness without the property claimed half honor price, property without the worthiness provided the good was done, ranked the same; worthiness and property were only entitled to a screpal (smallest silver coin) if no good were done.

False judgment, false witness, fraudulence, calumny, lying, refusing to give food, wounding, theft, satirizing, plundering, law breaking any instance of these lost half his honor price to the culprit. Any one committing such offences three times lost the privileges of his grade altogether. So did the poet, who claimed more than his due in any one instance.

Stealing food in the house, treachery, fratricide, secret murder, adultery, totally disqualified the guilty person. A poet or a man in holy orders would be thoroughly disqualified by one of those lighter offences, of which three would be required to disgrace a layman who was not a poet. The king was dealt more leniently with than the poet or cleric.

Any person by paying eric fine, and doing penance, was reinstated in his pristine consideration, a bishop excepted. He became a mere solitary or hermit.

The student of Irish history and policy, and jurisprudence, soon perceives that revenge for slain relatives was seldom carried to excess; that there was little tyranny, and that the authority of kings and chiefs was surrounded with many and well-defined restrictions, and that the body of the people showed much respect for the laws. There were seven ranks of gentlemen and chiefs, the highest being the king. The gentleman-farmer was allowed so many tenants, the next above him one tenant more, and

so on; the Bo-Aireach (gentleman cow-keeper) ranking above the farmer, the king having seven tenants more than the gentleman of lowest rank, and only one above the Tiernach ranking next to royalty.

On a peculiarity of the Brehon code or Cain Patraic, as it is sometimes termed, the observation of the learned editor of this first volume merits attention.

“It has been thought that Cain Patraic meant statute law; but the Irish law in early times appears to have rested on the decisions of Brehons or judges rather than on legislation, and the Senchus Mor itself is an authorized collection of approved judicial decisions like the pandects of the Roman law, and is not statute law, like the decrees of the Roman senate or people, or the constitutions of the emperors, or like our modern acts of parliament."

The term "Urradhus law" from Urradh, native, applies to those modifications of the general laws consequent on the division of Ireland into separate kingdoms and territories," the provinces “being partly independent, but partly also subordinate to the general laws." The term Cairde is applied to the interterritorial regulations, by which they were mutually bound to each other.

When will our law-makers cease to discover new varieties of offence or new relations of classes or individuals to each other, and when may we expect changes of old regulations or creations of new ones to cease Never, while the constitution holds together. It was not so in old Ireland. We cannot tell what new regulations were made by successive generations of Brehons from the days of Amergin; but this is beyond doubt, that once the three spiritual, and three temporal, and three juridical authorities, had rejected all the portions essentially pagan, and adopted the rest with but little modification, no one afterwards, bishop, king, or brehon, ever attempted to modify the great body of the Senchus Mor.

We now make our approaches to that section of the laws treated in this first volume-the law of distress. An ordinary reader taking up any

portion of it without some previous study will certainly find much that is unintelligible. Much of the difficulty is, however, removed for him by Dr. Handcock, in the preface, these being his explanations :

"The plaintiff or creditor having first given the proper notice, proceeded in the case of a defendant or debtor, not of the chieftain grade, to distrain. If, however, the defendant or debtor were a person of to give notice, but also to fast upon him. chieftain grade, it was necessary not only This fasting upon him consisted in going to his residence, and waiting there a certain time without food. If the plaintiff did not, within a certain time, receive satisfaction for his claim, or a pledge therefor, he forthwith, accompanied by a law agent, witdistress was in certain cases liable to a stay (anadh), which was a period varying ac cording to fixed rules, during which the debtor received back the distress and retained it, the creditor having a lien on it. distress with time; but in certain circumSuch a distress is Athgabkail or Fut, a stances and in particular cases, an immediate distress, Tul Athgabhail, was made, the peculiarity of which was, that during the fixed period of the stay the distress was not allowed to remain in the debtor's possession, but in that of the creditor, or in one of the recognised greens or pounds.

nesses, and others, seized his distress. The

"If the debt was not paid by the end of the stay, the creditor took it away, and put it into a pound.

He then served

notice of the distress on the debtor whom

he had distrained, letting him know where it was impounded. The distress remained in pound a certain time according to its nature, (Dithim, delay in pound is the name given to this period,) and the expense of tending and feeding ran against the distress, and was payable out of it for this period. At the end of the delay in pound, the forfeiting time (Lobadk) began forfeited at the rate of three Sedat per day until entirely forfeited. If the entire value of the distress thus forfeited was exactly equal to the original debt and the subsequent expenses, the debt was liquidated; if it was less than this a second distress was taken for the difference; and if more, the overplus was returne). All this was managed by the party himself or his law agent, with the several witnesses of the various steps, and other necessary parties.”

to run, during which the distress became

If the debtor contested the credi tor's claim, he pledged his son or

Dr. Hancock's observations on the preliminary fasting process, when a chieftain was called on to acquit a debt, deserve quotation.

"For this peculiar custom the only pre

cedent I have met with is in the Hindu law. The laws of Menu comprised a process called Acharitan, sometimes translated 'distress,' which was one of the processes by which a creditor might obtain the property lent.

"Acharitan is explained by the sitting (Dherna) at the door of the debtor, abstaining from food till by fear of the creditor dying at his door compliance on the part of the debtor is exacted-an alarming species of importunity, prohibited in the Bengal provinces.

"The Brahmins prevent their debtors eating by an appeal to his honour, and by stopping the supplies, and they fast themselves the whole time they compel their debtors to do so. This sort of compulsion is even used against princes, and must not be resisted by force. It is a very common mode employed by troops to procure pay ment of arrears, and is then directed against the paymaster, the prime minister, or the sovereign himself."

Celtic nature in its excellencies and defects, was instinctively and intimately understood by the framer of this law. Well he knew that the spectacle of the poor man at his door, suffering from hunger, would be the strongest inducement to the hospitable, though careless Irish gentleman, of the olden time, to discharge a disagreeable duty, and pay a vulgar debt. Some of our readers may not have heard of the country gentleman of Munster or Connaught, of last century, who would not, or probably

could not, pay a commonplace debt to a creditor who happened to be an unincumbered bachelor, and who, understanding the character of his man much better than an English state councillor pretending to make laws for him, paid his debtor a visit, never alluding to bond or mortgage, but living on the best fare which his host could place before him, and to which he was heartily welcome. When he considered his claim fully discharged by good board and lodging, he took an affectionate leave, and kept up most friendly relations with his friend to the day of his death, with the trifling exception of never lending him any more money. That hospitable debtor was probably the sixtieth descendant in right line of one of the fasted-on Tiernachs. May we introduce another modern illustration of the old law-maker's wisdom. A clergyman celebrated for have given (to use a homely phrase) his charity sermons, and who would the shirt off his back to relieve his poor, owed an equally charitable but more prudent Dublin citizen, ten pounds, and prospect of payment there was none. He wrote to his Rev. Debtor-"Dear Rev. Sir, I am in a terrible strait for thirty pounds on Thursday next; lend me so much of me." or I do not know what will become He received this reply: "Dear Sir, I have not a pound in my possession, but come and drink tea with me on Wednesday evening, and who knows what God may do!" He went to tea, got the thirty pounds, begged and borrowed in the interim, was profuse in acknowledgments, and returned twenty pounds next morning to his reverend and astonished friend.

An old Ollamh making laws for a Teutonic people, or a Teuton sage doing the same office for a Celtic people, might as profitably be employed at the task assigned by Michael Scott to the devil-making ropes out of sand.

The compensation for murder or manslaughter, for which Spenser censured the Brehon law, was not peculiar to the Gael. It formed one of the social regulations of many ancient nations. It was in force among the Anglo-Saxons who brought it with them from Germany. Tacitus looked on it more complacently than

It may be gathered from hints here and there given, that if the relatives of a person deliberately murdered, preferred his punishment to the receiving of the blood-eric, the murderer was put to death.

Very differently did the statement of the Brehon law of distress begin, from the preamble of a modern act of parliament. Suitable precedents were ever before the eyes of the old Ollamh

"Three white cows were taken by Asal from Moch, son of Nuadhat, by an immediate seizure, and they lay down a night at Ferta on the Boyne. They escaped from him: they had lost their calves, and their white milk flowed upon the ground. He went in pursuit of them, and seized six milch cows at the house at daybreak. Pledges were given for them afterwards by Coirpre Gnathchoir, for the seizure, for the distress, for acknowledgment, for triple acknowledgment, for acknowledgment by one chief, for double acknowledgment."

A long explanation follows of this passage; but in truth the commentary is rather more difficult in parts than the text, and many will come from the perusal with surprise that the captors should be rewarded for their negligence by being allowed to take away at next dawn, six cattle instead of three, their apparent due. The reader will have an idea of this curious commentary from the following extract, the portion in brackets being printed in closer type in the original :

"Had left their calves (i.e., with Mogh, son of Nuadhat, i.e., this was the reason of their straying). Their white milk upon the ground (ie., the milk of the cows upon the

earth. In the bright beautiful day, upon the face of the ground, or on the bright surface of the earth. 'Talamh,' i.e., from the word tellus, earth). He went in pursuit of them (ie., Asal went after them quickly or in haste, or people.were sent by him to seek them). And seized six milch cows at the house (ie., from the door of Nuadhat's house, i.e.; and they brought six similar cows with them from the house at the dawn of morning, or at the red streaking of the morning, i.e., six milch cows, ie., three cows and three cows more, as the second seizure at the house of Mogh's father). At daybreak, (ie., the separation of the day and night, or the first dawn of light)."

The parties in this apparently paltry affair were no less than the stewardbailiff of the King at Tara and the steward-bailiff of Coirpre Gnathcoir, King of Ulster.

Property brought respect with it even in the chivalric ages. If a man not having a cowshed and milkingyard in his possession, made a seizure in another chieftaincy, he might be resisted unless accompanied by a native (resident in the territory).

We find the Cain (general) law and the Urradhus (inter-territorial) law in conflict on one point. By the Urradhus, if a man of a neighbouring territory, whether possessed of a Cowshed and milking-yard or not, attempted to make a seizure unaccompanied by a territorial resident, it was not unlawful to resist a seizure. By the Cain law the stranger's claim could not be legally resisted even if unattended by a native, provided he could prove the possession of the much valued cow-house and milkingyard.

The man that fasted on a chieftain, and could not make his claim good, was liable to an eric. Even giving notice to fast was punished when the obstinate faster had not right on his side.

The wanderer, and the outlaw, and the bard, and the half-poet, and the satirist, and the chief professor, the king, the prince, the son of a living father, might be resisted in their claims unless they could induce a native to accompany them, gratis or for a fee.