LAWS AND INSTITUTES OF IRELAND.
RETURN to an Order of the Honourable The House of Coinrnons,
dated 17 May 1852;—
COPY " of the Report of the Commissioners appointed by the Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland, to Inquire concerning the Ancient Laws and Institutes of
Ireland', also, Copy of the Letter from the Chief or Under Secretary for
Ireland, forwarding the same to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury."
Sir, Dublin Castle, 27 April 1852.
I AM directed by the Lord Lieutenant to transmit to the Lords Commissioners
of Her Majesty's Treasury a copy of the Report, &c. of the Commissioners ap¬
pointed to inquire and report concerning the Brehon Laws, and his Excellency
requests their Lordships' favourable consideration as to the publication of these
laws.
I am, &c.
Sir C. E. Trevelyan, k.c.b. (signed) Johi Wynne.
&c. &c. &c.
THE REPORT of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire and Report
concerning the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK,
EARL OF CLARENDON, K.G., G.C.B., &c. &c.,
LORD LIEUTENANT-GENERAL AND GENERAL GOVERNOR OF IRELAND.
May it please your Excellency,
The principal materials necessary for the preparation of a Report on the
ancient Irish Laws being now collected and arranged, we have thought it our
duty to lay before your Excellency a brief statement of the results at which we
have already arrived; and to solicit some instructions respecting the time and
manner of completing the task which your Excellency has been pleased to
commit to us.
The first object to which our attention was directed was the formation of a
Catalogue of all the manuscripts of the Brehon Laws whicti are known to exist
in the United Kingdom. A numerous and valuable collection of these docu¬
ments, originally made in Ireland by the eminent Welsh antiquary and philo¬
logist, Edward Lhwyd, is now preserved in the Library of Trinity College,
Dublin, to which it was presented about 60 years ago by Sir John Sebright.
In thus disposing of it, he appears to have been influenced by the advice of the
celebrated Edmund Burke, who manifested on that occasion a lively anxiety to
have the materials of Irish history placed within the reach of scholars by the
translation and publication of all the ancient records of the country. Besides
the Trinity College MSS. and a few belonging to the Royal Irish Academy, we
have ascertained that transcripts of various portions of the Brehon Laws are to
be found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in the Library of the British
Museum, and in the Stowe Collection, now the property of Lord Ashburnham.
All these MSS.; except the last mentioned, to which we have not as yet been so
fortunate as to obtain access, have been described at great length in an analytical
catalogue, made according to our directions by Dr. O'Donovan and Mr. Eugene
Curry, and containing notices of their respective dates, and of the general nature
of the subjects they treat of.
The dates of the existing MSS. of the Brehon Laws vary from the early part
of the fourteenth to the close of the sixteenth century ; but the authority of some
is enhanced by the fact, that they were transcribed by persons in whose families
the office of Brehon or Judge had been hereditary for several generations.
For the laws themselves a much higher antiquity may be safely asserted. So
far as we have external evidence to guide us, there is no reason to suspect that
they have undergone any material chaiige since the time of Cormac Mac Cuil-
leanain, King and Bishop of Cashel, who died A. D. 908. He was a
356. A ma
