So far as the natural character is concerned, the Irishman from his very first appearance on the stage of history has preserved, almost unaltered, his well-known characteristic traits. He has ever been generous in his impulses, quick-witted, impressionable and hospitable. The spirit which pervaded the legislation of our primitive ancestors was rather that of modern than of ancient civilization. Three things the Irish people have consistently detested down from the days of Milesius――despotism, the so-called “right of primogeniture” and landlordism――three evils, whose baneful dominion in the island has been founded on the ruins of the nation’s independence. By their ancient law of tanistry, all dignitaries in the land, from the chief monarch down to the humblest canfinny, were chosen by the free suffrages of their countrymen. “The law of tanistry,” says an unfriendly English historian (Lingard II, 86), “regulated the succession of all dignities from the highest to the lowest. It carefully excluded the sons from inheriting, as of right, the authority of their father; and the tanist, or heir-apparent, was elected by the suffrages of the sept during the lifetime of the ruling chieftain. The eldest of the name and family had, indeed, the best title to this distinction; but his capacity and deserts were previously submitted to examination, and the charge of crime, or cowardice or deformity might be urged as an insuperable objection to his appointment.” So jealous were our forefathers of their political liberties! Nor did it agree with their notions of equity that the firstborn son should enjoy an exclusive or preponderating right of inheriting his father’s wealth. Their law of gavelkind prescribed that a man’s movable property should descend to all his sons equally, without any consideration to primogeniture. And what about the land? Why, a landlord has always been an odious character in Ireland. The primitive Irish preferred pasturage to agriculture, and I believe that preference is again become quite fashionable among the landlords over there. A man in the olden times possessed his land only so long as no death occurred in his sept. But, to quote Lingard, “at the death of each possessor the landed property of the sept was thrown into one common mass; a new division was made by the equity or caprice of the canfinny, and their respective portions were assigned to the different heads of families in the order of seniority.” This regulation, whilst it impresses us favorably as evincing the national love of fair play, must still be admitted to have been a crude and primitive arrangement. But it is amusing to observe that what modern socialists vaunt as a novel invention of the nineteenth century was fairly tried and wisely discarded centuries ago by the common sense of the Irish people. Their criminal code bore the impress of the national gentleness; for it is agreed that they always shrank from the actual infliction of capital punishment. Their religion