THE HISTORY OF IRELAND. A Dissertation on the Antiquity of 1. A NATION is as much entitled to historical as an individual is to distributive justice. Since the Irish have been connected with England, they have laboured under more historical misrepresentation and traduction than any people of Europe. No attempt has hitherto succeeded, perhaps none ever will succeed, to write a History of Ireland that shall be admitted true, in all its parts, by all parties. The attempt is disheartening, it is not impracticable.* Who * It is the duty of the historian to falsify Mr. Hume's assertion, that, No man has as yet arose, who has been enabled to pay an entire regard to truth, and has dared to expose her, without covering or disguise, to the eyes of the prejudiced public. (Jac. ii.) That this duty is severe is admitted by one of the most respectable historiographers of that country: "Even at this day, the historian of Irish affairs must be armed against censure only by an integrity which confines him to truth, and a literary courage which despises every charge but that of wilful or careless misrepresentation." (Lel. Prel. Disc. iii.) Disappointment would follow any expectation of approbation or countenance from the performance of that duty. Hugh O'Reilly was, at the Revolution, a master in chancery, and followed the fortunes of James II. who, after his abdication, named him his Irish chancellor. In 1693, he published Ireland's Case briefly stated, in which he as freely and truly stated the ungrateful conduct of Charles II. towards his Irish subjects, as he did the other transactions in that country after the Reformation. The exiled monarch read and disapproved of the manuscript. It contained too much truth: M'Geoghgan's Hist. i. vol. lvi. O'Halloran truly observes, that, " during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. and Charles II. to write in favour of Ireland or Irish affairs was deemed a proof of enmity to Great Britain; and that was the reason that all the works which were published in her favour during that period were printed in foreign countries." (Prel. Disc. xlix.) This can no longer be the case since the incorporate union of Great Britain and Ireland. HIST. IREL. VOL. I, 1 follows truth must disregard party. Semper eadem is an adage which brings to a level the remotest times, and most disparate usages. 2. "The love of history seems inseparable from human nature, because it seems inseparable from self-love. The same principle, in this instance, carries us forward and backward to future and past ages. We imagine that the things which affect us must affect posterity. This sentiment runs through mankind from Cæsar down to the parish clerk in Pope's Miscellany. We are fond of preserving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adventures, of those of our own times, and of those that preceded it."* There can be no impropriety in applying to a particular people what a great philosopher applied to mankind at large. History, true or false, speaks to our passions always. Nature has opened this study to every man that can read and think. And what she has made the most agreeable, reason can make the most useful application of the mind. The identity of general moral duty imports the identity of man's power, disposition, and obligation, and leads, by interesting instruction, to the conclusion of natural and revealed precept. The art of profiting of history renders the mind familiar with the remotest times and circumstances. The indulgence and resistance of the same passions in Job and Job's flatterers and tormentors, produced three thousand years ago precisely the same effect which in our intercourse with the world we daily witness and experience. But without intense reflection upon the identity of human nature, we are apt to confound the remote with the fabulous, to mistake anachronism for falsity, and sometimes to assume fiction even from probability. 3. The pride of ancestry, or interest in the fate of our forefathers, is more than a weakness when indulged to the excess of over-rating ourselves, or undervaluing others. Short of either of these effects, it is always natural, frequently rational, sometimes meritorious. No nation, on the face of the globe (except the Chinese and Egyptian chronologists, who contradict the Mosaic accounts) lays claim to such high antiquity, early civilization, and historical evidence, as the Irish. Whilst Ireland remained unsubdued, retaining her own language, laws, and ancient customs, this claim was never questioned. But from the moment our king Henry II. had * Bol. Lett. ii. on the Study of History. obtained a footing in that country, commenced the system of treating the Irish as a conquered people: it became the illjudged policy (too long, alas! persevered in) of the conquerors to humble and oppress the conquered. To a high-spirited people, which boasted of a monarchy that had retained its independence through a race of 197 kings for 2000 years, no humiliation could be more galling than to throw discre dit upon their history, and traduce and vilify their origin, lineage, and government. The hour which united the two kingdoms under one crown gave birth to the national contest about the authenticity of the ancient history of Ireland; a contest which, after the lapse of seven centuries, is more warmly combated than it was when Gerald Barry* first threw down the gauntlet by the orders of his royal master, Henry II. 4. Very stern philosophy may in some few instances work an indifference to all past events and circumstances, in which one is not personally concerned; but such forced apathy can only be planted in the extinction of the more amiable sympathies of human nature. If Bolingbroke said truly, that the study of history seems of all other the most proper to train us up to private and public virtue, such excess of stoicism and ascetic weaning from the concerns of this life can be hardly desirable. 5. History is founded on facts, not theories. There exist at this hour two numerous parties determinately engaged to support and oppose, the authenticity of the ancient history Gerald Barry, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis, was a nephew to Fitzstephens, one of the principal adventurers in the Irish expedition; he was sent over by Henry for the avowed purpose of writing such a history of Ireland as should be agreeable to the court of England, consequently, not very favourable to that of Ireland. Without troubling the reader with numerous critiques upon the ig norance, infidelity, and malice of this author towards the Irish, suffice it to apprize him, that Bishop Nicholson says, (Hist. Ir. Lib. p.3.) that Mr. J. Lynch, to whom Mr. Flaherty prefaces his Ogygia, wrote a particular detection of this man's mistakes and slanders, which he called Cambrensis Eversus, and published under the name of Gratianus Lucius: and, p. 40, he adds, Mr. J. Lynch has abundantly laid open the falsities and failures of Cambrensis in his history, as well as in the topography. Sir James Ware, (Ant. of Ir. cxxiii.) says, might here observe many things that are fabulously delivered by Giraldus Cambrensis concerning Ireland, but we remit them to the examination of others; for to do it exactly would require a particular treatise, and I cannot but wonder that some men of this age, otherwise grave and learned, should obtrude these fictions of Giraldus upor the world for truths.." "We of Ireland. It has become a national and, consequently, an interesting subject of difference. The solution of the doubt resting solely upon the weight of human evidence open to each party, precludes the propriety of any person engaged in the controversy remaining neuter. At the same time it may be pertinently asked, what concern that Irish annalist can assume in the truth or falsity of the history preceding the period of which he professes to give an account. The answer is, that the object in writing the history of Ireland, | from its dependance upon England till its incorporate union with Great Britain, is to bring before the eyes of a prejudiced public, without covering or disguise, the real character and conduct of the Irish people, and the manner, in which the British government has uniformly acted towards them. The adversaries in this historical contest are not absolutely divided, as might be expected, into British and Hibernian. Now, as well as in the days of Ware, men, grave and learned, have ranged themselves on opposite sides. The contest cannot be decided by number or weight, but by dint of argument and force of evidence. 6. In every controversy the contest is half decided, when the statement of the case is admitted by the antagonists. The intent of this dissertation is not to investigate and display the particulars of a period, the history of which is not intended to be written, but freely to discuss the general claim which the native Irish lay to the possession of a vernacular language, which their ancestors spoke about 3000 years ago, and to the government of their forefathers during such time by monarchs and laws of Scythian origin, until the sovereignty of their country passed into the hands of Henry Plantagenet. There is no intent to prove the precise chronology of each reign, or the veracity of every fact recorded by the annalists. The question is, Do any such annals exist? If they do, Are they to be credited as to their general substance? 7. There is a diversity of national as of individual character. Neither is secure from obloquy. From the publication of Gerald Barry's fabulous traductions of the Irish nation, about the close of the 12th century, to the publication of Dr. Ledwich's last edition of his Irish Antiquities in 1804, there has appeared, in many British writers, an unaccountable lust to vilify and criminate the Irish nation, from the mere.oircumstance of their maintaining the general authen |