In viewing the long duration of the infelicity of Ireland fince it has been dependent upon or connected with this country, it is impoffible not to lay the largest share of its calamity to the account of that monftrous anomaly in politics imperium in imperio. The only radical cure has now been applied. The restitution of Ireland to foundness and even vigour of conftitution now refts with Great Britain, which, fince the union, is compelled, from policy and intereft, to enfure the most beneficial effects to this national incorporation. Discovery facilitates the removal or weakens the power of every retardment or difficulty in the attainment of the end of this great object. By concentrating the profpective views of the diftinct parts of the British empire into one general focus, many particular and local prejudices and prepoffeffions will vanish and die away, which have hitherto only existed by the circumstances of feparation and independence. The numerous claims of royal lineage, which are feldom difannexed from wild convictions of rights to princely domain, and that especially in a fenfitive and impoverished people, will ultimately vanish, when we look up to this change in the government of Ireland for the correction of the evil; an evil which originated in the earlieft conftitutions of their government. The grand Milefian Monarchy was a model of the four great provincial and numerous other finaller kingdoms into which the island was fubdivided. Befides the univerfal monarch of the island and the four kings of the provinces, there were kings of Offaly, Limerick, Cork, &c. So that every provincial fovereign had under him as many kings as there were fepts or families of diftinction within the province: and although we can form no other idea at prefent of these numerous roitelets or petty fovereigns, than mere lords of manors or tenants in capite, yet the effects of the national prejudices,* unfortunately during the revelry, that Cormoc fhould fet fire to his beard, by which he loft his election. It is to be noted, that in order to prevent the mischiefs of anarchy during elections, by the ancient conftitution of Ireland, the fucceffor was elected during the life of the reigning monarch. * We can discover no period of the Irish history, at which the family pride of the Irish was not attended with mischievous effects. The very wide scope of the Irish annals throws almoft an appearance of romance upon the bare references to dates. Until the reign of the great Tuathal, of the race of Heremon, (A. D. 125.) few or none of the pofterity of the Milesians ever submitted to trade or any manual labour, left they should degrade their original, or bring a ftain upon their family. For this very purpose they kept in the country a number of the Belgians and Dannonians (the former of which passed under the name of Firl-bolgs) in order to carry on these fervile and mechanical occupations. But in the reign of Tuathal, tradesmen and mechanics, as well as artists of all unfortunately tranfmitted down by tradition, are as operative as if every fuch ancestor had been as powerful as Charlemagne. Diforders in ftates have elsewhere been raifed by the relatives of the depofed or deprived fovereigns: but whether the attempts fucceeded or failed, the effect was partial, not national, and died away as the royal lineage decayed either in number or power. But as in Ireland every individual of a fept, who bore the name, affumed the blood, and partook in fome degree of the confequence and dignity of their chief fovereign or king for the time being, the effect of debafement and deprivation embraced a wider range, and grew into a national evil of the greatest magnitude. The actual indigence of an individual that perhaps might have been greater under the ancient than the present order of things,* is contrafted against the eafe and luxury of modern opulence; and the influence of poverty and pride upon an irritable and bold race is but too obvious. Whatever national predilections or prejudices can by any means be put down, when different nations become fubject to a common fovereign, it is the undoubted policy of that fovereign to effect it without irritating the foreness which fuch changes are likely to create t. If the genuine origin of thefe national all profeffions, were put under the management of a committee, who had power to examine into their abilities, to reform all abuses, and to suspend fuch as by their unfairness or want of skill brought their occupations into difcredit. So that, according to Dr. Warner (Hift. of Ireland, 225.) this pride has been so inherent from that time to this, that Bishop Berkeley has faid, a kitchen wench in his family refused to carry out cinders, because she was defcended from an old Irish stock. But in the reign of this monarch, when they faw the legislature take trade and manufactures under their protection, and that no person was allowed to exercise the arts without a licence from the committee empowered by the general affembly of the ftates, many of the Milefians condefcended to follow fome employment. * Formerly the lower clafs of the people, being in a state of villeinage, had no property. They belonged to the foil, which they cultivated, and were transferred with it, at the pleasure of their mafters. At prefent there is no state so abject throughout the nation. † It is most unaccountable, that to the religion which the majority of the Irish nation now profeffes, the effects of these national prejudices or prepoffeffions have been and still are attributed by English, and latterly even by fome Irish writers. True it is, that the greatest part of the old Irish ftill profefs the religion of their chriftian ancestors; and true alfo is it, that the Irish nation is peculiarly tenacious of its old and accustomed habits and modes of thinking. Dr. Leland has informed us, that they account their minifters of religion as more than human. By these they are told, and they believe, that the religion which they received from St. Patrick, is what had been regularly transmitted to him from the apoftles of Chrift. The mere circumftance of profeffing the catholic religion is as extenfive and foreign from this national family pride or regal enthusiasm, as it is from T tional prejudices be to be traced, to paganism, not to christianity, we must refort. The pretenfions to the royal stock of fovereignty in Ireland were not the only grounds of this fyftem of family pride and confequent prefumption Each king or fovereign had his order of chivalry, of which he was himself the chief: his high prieft to fuperintend religion; his brehon or chief justice to expound the laws; his phyficians, antiquarians, chief treasurer, marshal, ftandard-bearer, generals of horse and foot, &c. All these were hereditary honours in certain families, out of which the most distinguished and best qualified were elected to the particular appointments. We have seen that in the agitation of fome of the great national questions in Ireland during these last twelve years, the public mind has been worked up more without grounds than without malice into a dread of the principle of refumption, fhould the civil liberties of British fubjects be imparted in common to the whole community of Ireland. True it is, that many of the illiterate Irish do entertain general confufed convictions, that princely poffeffions fhould ever attend the royal blood that fills their veins. This general species of gregarian refumption, grafted upon the collective claims of fepts or clans to certain diftricts, will upon close inspection and impartial investigation be found to refer only to the old tenures of Tanniftry and Gavelkind, of which we fhall fpeak hereafter, and by no means to the laws of England, which have for centuries regulated the defcent of lands in Ireland: otherwife the refumption would be confined to the individuals, upon whom the law would in the fuppofed cafes of refumption caft the inheritance, either by primogeniture or fome other mode of defcent. Now the only cry for refumption is ever fuppofed to arife from that caft of the natives, who have retained. that national spirit with the delufive claims of royalty and domain, which could alone be realized by the redintegration of the old Brehon inftitutions.* It any other diftinctive traits of national character, whether they depend on the endowments of the It goes not to touch the titles of any landed property, that was at any time put under English tenures. The Irish law of Gavelkind differed materially from the law, which we fo denominate in Kent. When any one died, all the poffeffions, real and personal, of the whole family, were put together (or in hotch-pot), and divided anew amongst the furvivors, by the head of the family, whom they termed the Caunfinny;* baftard fons were admitted into this distribution, though all females, both wives and daughters, and of courfe more remote female relatives, were excluded from it; the divifion extended to the whole fept or race, by which means, many vefted freeholds came upon fuch new partitions to be divested during the lives of the tenants. This law or cuftom was productive of one of the moft pernicious prejudices, that can pervade the useful part of a community: it prevented whole fepts or families, howfoever numerous and needy, from learning any trade, or turning mechanics, because they would be thus degraded, and the Caunfinny would in any future partition exclude fuch as had debafed themselves by fuch abdication of their family dignity. Union feems to afford the final corrective, if there ftill remain fuch fenfelefs and pernicious prepoffeffions. The national divifion into fepts or tribes, though natural to infant communities, was attended in the progrefs of population with the worst of confe 2 col. of Imp. Coll. p. viii.) fays, is rather a paradox than a history; and that his diftorted plagiarism of Lord Clarendon's manuscript "rendered him fufpected not to be overstocked with ho"nefty and juftice, fo neceffary to the reputation of an unblemished hiftorian. He wrote for the "avowed purpose of defending the harsh government of his father, Sir John Borlafe and Sir "William Parfons :" and Nalfon, as well as the Bishop of Derry, (Ir. Hift. lib. 56.) admits, that he continued Sir John Temple's partial and unfaithful memoirs, and wrote reflections upon Lord Caftlehaven's Memoirs, as being openly and avowedly a favourite of the faction and the men and actions of thofe times. The Bishop of Derry quotes from Lord Castlehaven's publication, made in 1684, a private opinion of that nobleman upon the effect of these prepoffeffions, viz. that in his judgment, the only true and great motive to this rebellion (as well as to all others fince the reign of Henry II.) was the old national feud, built upon an inflexible perfuafion that the fovereignty and property of all the lands in the kingdom, by their unrepealed Brehon law, refted ftill in the furviving heirs of the meer Irish or Milesian stock. The noble memorialist was inattentive to the judgment of the King's Bench in the reign of James I. and did not seem aware that by ftrict law (though unobserved) the whole kingdom was then subjected to the common law of England. * Le Canfinny, ou chef de fept (que fuit communement le plus auncient de fept) fesoit toutz les partitions per fon dyfcretion. Dav. Rep. 49. quences, quences, and these were entailed upon the nation by the laws of *Taniftry and Gavelkind: of the latter I have already spoken; and by the former, fucceffors were chofen during the lives of their ancestors, not only to their monarch and other kings, but also to their great state and other officers, which were elective within a given line of hereditary defcent. There exifted alfo a custom peculiar to Ireland, of giving out their children to be nursed by fosterers. † It extended for fome years beyond the neceffity of keeping the child at the breast, and it confequently tended to strengthen the ties of affection and attachment which united the members of the different tribes or fepts. It created an extraordinary fraternizing fpirit amongst the Irish, unknown to other nations; and hence, in a comparative view of the different difpofitions of the English and Irish, it has been obferved, that there is more warmth of affection in Ireland for a fofter brother, than in England for a brother by confanguinity. * Sir John Davis reports very fully the judgment of the court of King's Bench in Ireland, 5 Jac. (p. 28.) by which they declared the custom of holding by Taniftry to be void by reafon of its uncertainty, and on other grounds there fpecified. This judgment was given upon a fpecial verdict found in ejectment between Murrough Mac Bryen, plaintiff, v. Cahir O Callaghan, defendant. The custom or tenure of Taniftry was, that the lands fo holden descended, feniori & dignissimo viro fanguinis cognominis of the perfon who laft died feized. The fame reporter gives us the refolutions of the judges touching the Irish cuftom of Gavelkind, by which it was refolved and declared, per touts les juftices, that the faid Irish custom of Gavelkind was void in law, not only from the inconvenience and unreasonableness of it, but because it was a mere personal custom, and could not alter the descent of an inheritance by the common law of England. It is there faid that formerly in Ireland every lordfhip or chiefry, with the portion of land that paffed with it, went without par-. tition to the Tanist, who always came in either by election, or manú forti, and not by descent; but all inferior tenancies were divifible among the males in Gavelkind (p. 49.) By this cuftom, fays Sir John Davis, (Hift. Ir. 180.) "the potent and rich men felling, and "the meaner fort buying the alterage of their children: and the reason was, because, in the opi"nion of this people, fostering hath always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster "children love and are beloved of their foster fathers and their fept more than of their own natural 66 parents and their kindred." In order to prevent the natural effects of fostering children, and by the crooked policy of those days, in the 28th of Henry VIII. ch. 28. it was made treason for any of the king's subjects within the land to marry or fofter themselves, their children, or king's folk, within the fourth degree, or any of them to or with any Irish perfon or perfons of Irish blood, which be not the king's true fubjects, nor use themselves accordingly, though any fuch perfon or perfons be made denizens. What ideas of oppreffion and inconfiftency does not this statute afford, viz. the poffibility of a king's fubject being denizened, and a prohibition of the intercourse of nature between the king's fubjects? The |