Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/15

THE PREFACE. land, both for obedience to the lawes, as also in traffique, husbandry, civility, & learning, he would have omitted those passages which may seeme to lay either any particular aspersion upon some families, or generall upon the Nation. For now we may truly say, jam cuncti gens una sumus, and that upon just cause those ancient statutes, wherein the natives of Irish descent were held to be, and named Irish enemies, and wherein those of English bloud were forbidden to marry and commerce with them, were repealed by act of Parlament, in the raigne of our late Soveraigne King of ever blessed memory.

His proofes (although most of them conjecturall) concerning the originall of the language, customes of the Nations, and the first peopling of the severall parts of the Hand, are full of good reading; and doe shew a sound judgment. They may be further confirmed by comparing them with Richard Creagh's Booke de linguâ Hibernicâ, which is yet extant in the originall manuscript, & althogh mixed with matter of story, leaning too much to some fabulous traditions, yet in other respects worthy of light.