Page:Ireland and England in the past and at present.djvu/27

Rh "the other hand was divided into the widest possible range of self-governing communities, which were bound together in a willing federation. The forces of union were not material but spiritual. . . . Such an instinct of national life was neither rude nor contemptible.3"

But such an interpretation must be based on fancy and desire and modern feeling rather than on careful study of the past; and it is not what the Brehon Laws seem to show. One who did make such a study says: "The social system was aristocratic: in no case have we evidence that there was a community governed by an assembly of representatives without a permanent head."4 Each group was governed by a chief, who was always a member of the ruling family; though it should be said that the successor was often elected during the lifetime of the ruler, being called then the tanist, or second in authority.

Erin was divided among groups of people, large or small. The smaller were ruled by flaiths or chiefs, the larger by ri0s or kings, while all of them were in some sort under the ard-ri or great king, who had a sovereignty over the lesser kings, they being obliged to attend him in war and pay tribute. That is to say, there was the ard-ri at Tara in Meath; under him there were the kings of Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Meath; under them were lesser kings, beneath whom there were chieftains in each case the lesser being bound to the greater by war-service and 3 Mrs. J. R. Green, Irish Nationality (London, 1911), pp. 14, 15, 4 P. W. Joyce, A Short History of Ireland (London, 1904), p. 59.