61 



forests, and deserts, are far from being inviting to an enemy;"* — as if 

 tliat very sterility should not have been the cause of its late coloniza- 

 tion; while Mr. James Mac-Pherson, the self-elected champion, thinks 

 *' to close with one decisive argument the controversy ."-f* " Should 

 this early settlement," says he, " be once ascertained, it naturally 

 ought to follow, that the British Scots must have carried with them 

 to Caledonia, that learning, science, and civility, which had made so 

 great a progress in their mother country, before they transmigrated 

 from it; but nothing is more certain, than that the British Scots were 

 an illiterate people, and involved in barbarism even after Saint 

 Patrick's mission to the Scots of Ireland !"|. But, according to cus- 

 tom, his refutation comes from his own lips, and, in a few pages after 

 the antidote is supplied, where he says, that "the Scots of Britain, by 

 an uninterrupted series of hostilities with the Britons, Picts, and 

 Saxons, were diverted from cultivating letters. '*§ 



. Had he not given this suicidal answer, it might even be naturally 

 replied, that colonies have never been the most faithful medium of 

 transmitting the sciences of the parent country, and yet more espe- 

 cially in an age when learning was confined to castes of individuals, that, 

 from the nature of the rank and rewards which dignified them at home, 

 must have been the least likely to emigrate. Mr. Mac-Pherson's other 

 arguments, though thrown out in a quantity of inadequate problems, 

 resolve themselves into these. — 1st. That the Picts were a warlike and 

 disciplined nation, and " able to employ the whole Roman army ;" 

 ergo, the Irish, whom a single legion was sufficient to subdue, (taking 

 that interested suggestion of the petty king for granted,) could not 

 have made conquests over such a people.— 2nd. Because Tacitus and 



* Dissertation, p. 14. 1 Introduction, p. 72 



f Introduction, p. 72. § Introduction, p. 145. 



