456 RESULTS OF THE RECORD COMMISSIONS. 



this book. It is meant to be a complete Chief Secretary's book the red 

 book of record from the earliest ages to the latest establishment; displaying 

 the present and past state of all the offices, public institutions, and public 

 boards ; with lists in regular succession, and abstracts of all acts of parlia- 

 ment relating to the same ; together with a full series of precedents of the 

 privy seals, warrants, patents, commissions, &c. ; also of returns and reports, 

 in chronological and departmental order. It professes to give the history of 

 all offices, and their methods of doing business. It is a perpetual calendar, not 

 only of royal, but of any other patronage, of dignities, titles, parliamentary 

 privileges, of franchise of boroughs subjoining the abstract of their charters; 

 schedules, tables of remuneration, pensions, salaries of office, and all the 

 accounts official or public of Ireland; &c. &c." 



Q. Is there any controul exercised over your transactions at the present 

 moment by the record commissioners of Ireland? A. No, there is none 

 whatever; but I have been desired to confer with Sir Thomas Tomlins, 

 who is a man of great experience, both as a lawyer, and as connected with 

 the records of the country.* ******* 



Q. Was there any controul exercised over the work, except by Sir 

 Thomas Tomlins? A. No; nor was there any exercised even by him, in the 

 vulgar sense of that word. He judged with his usual good sense that an 

 architect might, if honest, be trusted with his own work, and was the only 

 person that could properly be held responsible." 



The work consists of two unwieldy volumes. The first of these 

 is commenced with an " Introduction and Plan/' in which Mr. Las- 

 celles gives us the following information: " We may observe here, 

 once for all, that Ireland itself has no history." If we might ven- 

 ture to quote in opposition to so great an authority as Rowley Las- 

 celles, the words of Sir James Mackintosh, we would cite the following 

 passage : " In one respect, Irish history has been eminently fortunate. 

 The chronicles of Ireland, written in the Irish language, from the 

 second century to the landing of Henry Plantagenet, have been 

 recently published, with the fullest evidence of their genuineness 

 and exactness. The Irish nation, though they are robbed of many of 

 their legends by this authentic publication, are yet by it enabled to 

 boast that they possess genuine history several centuries more ancient 

 than any other European nation possesses in its present spoken language: 

 they have exchanged their legendary antiquity for historical fame. 

 Indeed no other nation possesses any monument of its literature, in its 

 present spoken language, which goes back within several centuries of the 

 beginning of these chronicles. The ancient date of the manuscripts 

 concurs with the same internal proof as in the Saxon chronicle, to 

 support the truth of the outline of their narrative: they are edited 

 by the learned and upright Dr. Charles O'Connor, the lineal descend- 

 ant of Roderic O'Connor, king paramount of Ireland at the time of 

 the Anglo Norman invasion. Dr. O'Connor lived only to complete 

 this monument of the literature of his country, of which his fore- 

 fathers were the last native and independent rulers/' History of 

 England, vol. I, pp. 88, 89. 



Mr. Lascelles begins with upwards of one hundred and seventy 

 pages of meagre and incorrect historical matter, under the head of a 

 " Supplement to the History of England; or Res Gestae Anglorum 

 in Hibernia;" consisting chiefly of a vulgarized abridgement of 

 Leland, so far as his work extends, with a continuation to the period 



