could contrive to give a vote in the Lords, and on such an occasion, astonishing and perplexing as it may seem to the reader, Mr. M. leaves entirely unexplained. I suppose the vote in question was given in the recusant Council of war, which preceded, and led to, the change of policy on the part of the Irish Romanists, mentioned at p. 884 sup. (Vid. Phelan, Policy, &c. p. 270, note.) No. LXXVII. SOME ALLEGED EVIDENCES OF THE BARBARITY OF THE ANCIENT ancient Irish were a wild ous people. Mr. Wright, author of the Literature and Super- whether the stitions of England in the Middle Ages, has made free to introduce into that work some very ill- and barbarjudged observations on the character of the ancient Irish people, which it may not be amiss to notice here; as our doing so may help in some quarters to guard unwary readers against allowing themselves to be misled by such erroneous reasoning as this author alleges in support of his conclusions. In vol. ii. pp. 216, 217, he writes thus: "In spite of all that has been advanced to the con VOL III. 2 P That they were such, a recent author attempts to prove. Dermot Mac adduced as an illustration. trary, we still continue to look upon the ancient Irish as a wild and barbarous people. Such were they found when the Romans entered Britain; such were they in the time of the Saxons; and their character was not changed for the better when the Anglo Normans succeeded in establishing themselves in the isle. For ages they had infested by their piratical depredations the coasts of England and Wales. When during the days of Saxon rule a rebellious noble had been defeated in his projects, he fled immediately to Ireland to recruit his strength; and at its conquest at the end of the twelfth century, the country was full of English slaves, who had been purloined from their homes. Such being the case, we need not wonder if our kings sometimes contemplated the conquest of Ireland as a matter of policy; and it appears from the Saxon chronicle, that William the Conqueror had himself formed the design of reducing it to a dependence on the British crown." Again, (at p. 228 ib.) "Giraldus has preserved an Murrough anecdote, strikingly characteristic of the savage manners of the Irish of this period. Among the heads which were thrown on the ground before him, Dermod [Mac Murrough] recognised one as that of a person who had been peculiarly obnoxious to him: as he danced exultingly among the heads of his foes, he suddenly seized upon this one, raised it by the ears to his mouth, and with a barbarous joy, bit off the nose and part of the lips.' Alleged effects of the Conquest. " And at p. 255, "The chronicles of the time tell us how the barbarous manners of the natives were suddenly improved and polished by the more vigorous government under which they were placed "* after the Conquest. Note, ib.-"All the documents of the period agree in representing Ireland as not only a land of savages, but as a den of thieves. William of Newbury, (lib. 3. c. 9,) speaking of the manners of the people of Ulster at the time of their conquest by De Courcy, says, The people of this province,' &c., as at p. 524 sup. tence in Ire was barba rous justifies not the tracts. Now it is not denied, that, by the dreadful The exisvisitation of the Danish wars, civilization and land of improvement of every kind were greatly reduced, much that and brought to a very wretched and pitiable condition in Ireland, or that various disorderly tone of the and criminal practices were lamentably preva- above exlent in the country at the period of the Conquest. But to exaggerate these unhappy circumstances in such a tissue of reckless and mischievous misrepresentation as developes itself in the above extracts, is a course, to say the least of it, altogether unworthy of a respectable and intelligent writer, and one deserving the reprobation of every well-minded and honest individual. For let us but look these statements in the The repreface. "The Irish were barbarous when the sentations they convey Romans invaded Britain." They were, and so examined. were the people of Britain likewise. "Such were the Irish in the time of the Saxons." Nay, Whether the this is utterly false, as every smatterer in his- barbarous in tory may know that the Irish were then distin- the Saxon guished for their learning at home and abroad, and their bishops and other teachers, colleges, and schools, were the means of converting and Irish were age. enlightening the Saxons themselves, as they gratefully acknowledged in many ways, and as their own historian Bede fully records. Nor was any barbarous act of the Irish in the Saxon age so flagrant, as that which the venerable Saxon historian tells of some of his own people, (1. iv. c. 26,) that "in the year of our Lord's inEgfrid more carnation 684, Egfrid, king of the Northumbarbarous. brians, despatched his general Berct, with an army, into Ireland, and miserably wasted an inoffensive people, who had ever shewn the most friendly feeling to the English nation; insomuch that in the violence of their onslaught, they spared not even the churches and monasteries;" for which impiety, as the same writer supposes, they were visited the next year with The slave judgments from heaven. "But the Irish used to invade other countries, bring away captives, and keep them for slaves." The heathen Irish certainly did undertake predatory expeditions out of their own land, as did also the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans, who are not generally regarded as having been "barbarous ;" and the Saxons themselves, and Normans likewise, who should otherwise never have taken England from its earlier owners for themselves. "But even the Christian Irish kept slaves." To be regretted, certainly although we do not read that they encouraged people to dealing of the old Irish considered, victed of misrepresentation. steal them, or treated them with such cruelty as the Americans and others do to this day. An Irish slave was treated as a fellow-creature, and employed about such occupations of herding cattle, &c., as farm-servants and other domestics engage in voluntarily at present. And how did Ireland come to be full of slaves at the time of the Conquest? Ask Giraldus ;-and he will tell and their acyou (pp. 501, 502 sup.) that it was the unnatural cuser conEnglish of that age themselves, who for mere love scandalous of money would sell their own children and relatives to strangers: and that of the two parties, the Irish appear to have been those who were most ready to shew compunction, and exhibit in a practical way their penitence for having had a share in this heartless traffic, by proclaiming abolition of slavery in their island, before ever England had adopted such a course. Shame, shame to the writer, who could then bring it as a reproach to the ancient Irish that those slaves were purloined from England by them, when the gross falsehood of such a statement is so plainly manifest. "But Note on the used not rebellious nobles, defeated in England, factious nocome to Ireland to recruit their strength, and bles in Engget shelter and protection ?" And why not? Is Irish. it any proof of barbarity in London that it shelters all such characters, defeated in all parts of Europe and elsewhere, and harbours, protects, and aids them now. When two Welsh princes aid given to land by the |