Note 466 — Chapter XVIII · ON THE CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND

Leland seems to favour the authenticity of the supposed Brehon laws published by Vallancey. Introduction, 29. The style is said to be very distinguishable from the Irish of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the laws themselves to have no allusion to the settlement of foreigners in Ireland, or to coined money; whence some ascribe them to the eighth century. On the other hand, Ledwich proves that some parts must be later than the tenth century. Dissertations, i. 270. And others hold them to be not older than the thirteenth. Campbell's Historical Sketch of Ireland, 41. It is also maintained that they are very unfaithfully translated. But, when we find the Anglo-Saxon and Norman usages, relief, aid, wardship, trial by jury (and that unanimous), and a sort of correspondence in the ranks of society with those of England (which all we read elsewhere of the ancient Irish seems to contradict), it is impossible to resist the suspicion that they are either extremely interpolated, or were compiled in a late age, and among some of the septs who had most intercourse with the English. We know that the degenerate colonists, such as the Earls of Desmond, adopted the Brehon law in their territories; but this would probably be with some admixture of that to which they had been used.