71 



SECTION II. 



Govei-nment, Constitution, Legislation, Sfc. 



The object of this section, being purely relative to the internal 

 regulation of the island, cannot be expected to receive much light from 

 foreign sources ; but the Irish historians very fully inform us that 

 Tara, a hill in the present County of Meath, continued to be during 

 these four centuries, as it had been for a period of 600 years before 

 the birth of Christ, the seat of their heathen kings ; and that an 

 assembly of the Chiefs, Druids, Annalists, and Bards of the different 

 tribes and tributaries, was convened there annually about the middle 

 of October, in the presence of the king, when historical records were 

 corrected, provincial differences adjusted, and services and tributes in 

 kind imposed for the maintenance of the state ; all matters relative 

 thereto being decided in a kind of Areopagus, in Irish termed the 

 Labhereigh,* where much of that freedom of opinion was allowed, 

 which Tacitus seems to allude to by the words " libertas * * * * 

 in conspectu Britanniae ;""t" and lastly, that on a stone there preserved, 

 and called Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, the supreme kings of Ireland 

 were inaugurated. 



While Pinkerton admits he " can see no reason for denying to 

 Ireland a series of kings older than any in Europe," the only exter- 

 nal evidence of their mode of government and domestic regulation 

 that can be offered, or indeed expected, to support the above little 

 sketch of so early a period is, that in the first place Ptolemy says, 



* Beauford's Memoirs ol' a Map. f See ante, p. 51. 



