By the Rev. J. L. Ross. 187 
“To them belonged the right of creating an annual magistrate 
to govern in every city, sometimes with the name and authority of 
king or vergobret, who could do nothing without them, nor so much 
as assemble his council: so that, strictly speaking, it was they that 
actually reigned, and the kings were but their ministers, or rather 
slaves. 
“Justice was administered only by them. Umpires in all the 
differences and interests of the nation, they equally decided public 
affairs and those of private persons, punished crimes, and in pro- 
cesses they adjudged a controverted property to him whom they 
thought entitled to it. Those who refused to vield to their decision, 
were anathematized; they were interdicted from all sacrifice, and 
accounted profane by the rest of the nation, none daring so much 
as to frequent their company. 
“The Druids had the charge of the whole of religion, which also 
gave them an unlimited power. Thus sacrifices, offerings, prayers, 
public or private; the privilege of predicting future events, of con- 
sulting the gods; of giving responses in their names; of studying 
nature; the right of rejecting or establishing new ceremonies; of 
seeing to the observance of ancient laws; of making additions to 
them according to occurrences; of declaring war, and making 
peace; of confirming or annulling the election of kings and vergo- 
brets; that is, those who in certain provinces of Gaul” (and the 
British Druids were the same in origin and authority) “were like 
the Archons of Athens, but only with an annual power ; all these 
were their province.””! 
The doctrines and science of the Druids have been also described 
by Abbé Banier. ‘All the maxims of the Druids tend to make 
men wise and just, religious and valiant. The fundamental 
points of their doctrines were reduced to these three: To adore 
the gods, to injure nobody, and to be brave and courageous. Pom- 
ponius Mela speaking of their philosophy, says they professed to 
know the form and magnitude of the earth, and in general of the 
whole universe ; as also the course of the stars and their revolutions; 
and that their retired life in the caves and woods, where they had 
1 Banier Myth. vol. iii. “pp. 230, 231, 232, 
