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ligible ; but to those whose knowledge of the ancient language is 
more extensive, the case is otherwise. When Mr. O’Conor wrote 
there was no dictionary of the Irish language that contained above 
eighteen or twenty thousand words. A translation of the Irish laws 
would, at that time, be therefore attended with great labour and 
difficulty. But now that there is.an Irish Dictionary containing: up- 
wards of fifty thousand words, many of which are extracted from the 
ancient laws, and from other very ancient manuscripts, it is submitted 
that the principal difficulty attending a translation of the Brehon 
Laws is removed. 
It would be irrelevant to the subject proposed by the Royal Irish 
Academy, to point out the method for reading and studying our 
ancient law books: but it may not be improper to say, that he, who 
intends to study those remains of Irish jurisprudence, must begin 
by making himself master of the contractions, with which they 
abound ; and of the Ceannfhochras, or change of initials, which dis- 
guises the orthography, and throws great obscurity on the subject, 
and on the meaning of the words. 
In the foregoing pages we have taken a view of some of the 
subjects treated of in the ancient laws of Ireland, of which copies 
of great antiquity are known to be still extant. From the existence 
of these copies it is evident, that those, who have denied that the an- 
cient Irish had written laws, have either been misinformed them- 
selves, or wished to mislead others. We have seen, from the con- 
current testimony of all our historians, the catalogue which we 
have given of ancient lawgivers, and the internal evidence of the 
laws themselves, that the Irish institutes were formed at a very early 
period ; and we have arguments before us in support of the opinion, 
that those laws suffered no very great change from the time of their 
first enactment to the commencement of the 17th century, except so 
