THE ANCIENT LAWS OF IRELAND.
Next to written and well-authenticated historical annals, the clearest insight that can be afforded us of the civilization, polity, and social condition of the nations of antiquity is derived from the study of ancient laws and customs, when their authenticity is guaranteed by existing contemporary authorities, and they bear in themselves the intrinsic evidence of adaptability to time, place, and circumstance, so easily recognized by the antiquarian and the philologist. Were it possible to conceive the total destruction of this republic with all its material monuments and historical literature, nothing being left for posterity but our books of law, the philosophical student a thousand years hence would be able to form a pretty correct and comprehensive idea of the state of society at present existing and of the nature of the institutions under which we have the good fortune to live. From the large number of statutes regulating the intercourse of man and man, he would deduce the fact that we were a commercial and ingenious people; from our laws relating to real estate, he would necessarily argue that its ownership was general and its transmission from one to another a matter of everyday occurrence; and from the few restrictions imposed on its possession or sale, that the facilities for its acquisition were comparatively easy and unrestricted; while from the care that has been taken by our national and local legislatures to guard the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizen, he would naturally conclude that our right to the enjoyment of these inalienable rights formed the corner-stone of the edifice of our government.
In the same manner, we of this century, looking back to a country so old as Ireland, one of the most antique of the family of European nations, by examining the laws framed in the early days of her dawning civilization, can picture to ourselves, even without the aid of history, the genius of her inhabitants, and form comparatively accurate opinions of how much or how little intelligence and natural sense of justice and the "eternal fitness of things" were exhibited by them in their efforts to regulate and organize society. Strange to say, we are partly indebted for this opportunity to the English government, never very generous in its patronage of Irish interests, though of course the principal credit is due to that noble band of Irish scholars, formerly headed by the late lamented O'Curry, Petrie, and O'Donovan, who by their antiquarian lore, profound knowledge of their vernacular, and untiring industry, have reconstructed from the scattered and almost illegible manuscripts deposited in various libraries the body of the laws of ancient Ireland, and have presented them to the world in the language in which they were originally written, with the elaborate glosses of after-years, accompanied by an accurate English translation. This long-desired work bears the appropriate and principal title of Senchus Mor, or great law, and contains all the laws that were enforced in Ireland from the fifth to the seventeenth centuries, if we except a small portion of the island which was occupied by the Anglo-Norman colony from the invasion till the reign of James I. That it was admirably adapted to the wants and dispositions of the people, we can judge by the affection and tenacity with which the natives so long clung to it, in despite of all the efforts of the invaders to induce them by force or fraud to adopt that of the conquerors, and that it was more liberal and equitable than the harsh restrictions of the feudal system is proved from the alacrity of the Anglo-Norman lords who resided without the "pale" in conforming to it in preference to their own enactments.
Like most of her other blessings, Ireland owed the possession of this excellent and merciful code to the Catholic Church, for it was in the eighth or ninth year of the ministration of her great apostle and at his instance that it was framed as we at present find it, purified from all the grossness of paganism, and freed from the uncertainty and doubt which always attach to mere tradition. Up to his time, law in Ireland had been administered at the discretion of Brehons or judges, and, being preserved only in the poems of the bards and ollamhs (professors), was deficient in those essential qualities of all human legislation, exactness and uniformity. That there were learned and wise lawgivers in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, we know from history and from the introduction to and the text of the Senchus itself, in which frequent mention is made of decisions and writings, but they were necessarily the exponents of that limited sense of justice which the human mind, unaided by religion, is capable of comprehending. The propagation of the faith in Europe created a complete and permanent revolution in the laws of each country successively visited with the light of the gospel, and while the darkness of paganism vanished before it, the municipal laws which upheld idolatry were either totally abrogated or modified so as to conform, as much as possible, to the benign spirit of the church. The immediate occasion of the revision of the Irish laws is stated to have been the deliberate murder of one of St. Patrick's servants by a relative of the reigning sovereign, but the real cause, no doubt, was the desire of the saint to root out of the judicature of the people all traces of paganism as effectually as he had erased it from their hearts.
Accordingly, by virtue of his high office, he summoned a convention of the learned men of the country, a few years after his arrival, and proceeded to execute his important reforms. His principal assistants, we are informed, were Laeghaire, monarch of all Ireland, Corc, and Dairi, two subordinate kings, whom we may suppose represented the temporal authority of the nation, and without whose countenance and support it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the new code; Rossa, Dubhtach, and Fergus, those poets and professors whose duty it had been to preserve and perpetuate the legal traditions of their race and the decisions of the Brehons; and two ecclesiastics, Saints Benen and Cairnech. The former of these bishops, afterward known by the name of Benignus, was one of St. Patrick's earliest and favorite converts, and eventually his successor in the primatial see of Armagh, and the latter, a Briton from Wales, was remarkable alike for his piety and extensive learning. Thus sustained by the civil arm, and assisted by the advice and knowledge of men well versed in the common and canon law, the saint, in addition to his other apostolic labors, succeeded in leaving to the people he loved so well a harmonious and Christian code, the spirit of which, like that of all his teachings, sank deep in the popular heart, and defied the efforts of time and the ruthlessness of man to eradicate it.
While this code remained the rule of guidance for the mass of the people, it was sacredly preserved by the Brehons, who, though not empowered to alter it in any respect, added elaborate commentaries explanatory of its general or obscure provisions; but when the country was divided into counties by the conquerors, and their system took the place of the national one, the manuscripts of the ancient laws were scattered through the country, in England and on the Continent, whither they were brought by the exiles.
As early as 1783, Edmund Burke, ever mindful of the fame of his native country, suggested the propriety of collecting and publishing in English or Latin those remarkable remnants of former greatness and wisdom, but it was not till the year 1852 that the English government, at the repeated solicitation of several distinguished and influential Irish gentlemen, consented to lend its aid to the great work, which from its very magnitude was beyond the ability of any individual or voluntary association to accomplish. In that year, at the special instance of Doctors Todd and Greaves, both eminent Protestant clergymen, a commission was issued appointing them and several other well-known scholars "to direct, superintend, and carry into effect the transcription and translation of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication," etc., with power to employ proper persons to execute the work. The persons selected by the commissioners were Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, both thoroughly qualified to perform so momentous and laborious a labor, and whose conscientious discharge of the duties so assigned them ended only at their much lamented deaths. With the patience and zeal of true antiquarians, they set about transcribing the various MSS. relating to the old laws, deciphering the half-obliterated characters of the earlier centuries, and rendering the peculiar phraseology of the Gaelic into modern English. They were succeeded by W. N. Hancock, LL.D., professor of jurisprudence in Queen's College, Belfast, and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony, professor of Irish in the Dublin University, under whose auspices the two volumes already in print were prepared for publication, having first received the sanction and approval of the commission. With such endorsement, we do not wonder that, speaking of the authenticity of the Senchus Mor, O'Curry should have said in one of his admirable lectures on Irish history, "I believe it will show that the recorded account of this great revision of the body of the laws of Erin is as fully entitled to confidence as any other well-authenticated fact in ancient history."
The principal materials used by the distinguished translators are thus described in the preface to the first volume:
"I. A comparatively full copy among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin. H. 3, 17.
"II. An extensive fragment of the first part, 432, of the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum.
"III. A large fragment of the latter part among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin, H. 2, 15.
"IV. A fragment among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin, H. 3, 18."
Of the capacity of the gentlemen above-mentioned to faithfully transcribe and translate these valuable relics of past legislation there can be no doubt, nor of the genuineness and authenticity of the records themselves. They are not, of course, the originals as written in the fifth century, but are accurate copies, as far as they have been saved from destruction, made centuries ago by the Brehons and ollamhs, and handed down by them from father to son, for the Brehon order was hereditary, and from generation to generation, until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Besides this, by their peculiar wording and reference to contemporaneous events and opinions, they bear the undoubted impress of great antiquity, and of having been intended for the government of a primitive people, who had little or no intercourse with the outside world. We have thus before us for the first time a complete body of written fundamental laws, collected and perfected over fourteen hundred years ago by a segregated and peculiar race, occupying a remote part of Europe, the only part, in fact, of the civilized portion of that continent that never echoed to the tread of a Roman soldier, or bowed before the edicts of an imperial Cæsar. In reading over the laws of that unique and ancient people, so unlike all we know of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, we find, not without some regret, we must confess, that the halo of exalted virtue and unsullied purity with which the poetic fancy of subsequent historians and poets led them to surround their pagan ancestors, vanishes like the mists of a summer morning, but we discover also that the epithets, barbarous, ignorant, and unlettered, so freely bestowed on them by the venal scribes of the dominant race, rest on no foundation whatever save on the malice or deficiency of knowledge of the Anglo-Norman authors. In truth, the Irish of the pagan era seem to have had nearly all the virtues and failings of their posterity of to-day, the former being brought more actively into play under the influence of Christianity, and the latter repressed by the unlimited authority of the Catholic Church and the judicious regulations of the Senchus.