Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/34

 Such was the internal economy of the stateship. Within itself it was a social and economic unit. But in the State it was a political unit, for it was fitted in as part of an elaborate national economy. If the stateship in question were part of a Mor-Thuath, then its ruler would only have the title of underking, ur-ri. In that case the stateship (tuath) would only come under the provincial king through the territory (mor-thuath.) Otherwise it would come under the immediate jurisdiction of the province. And the provinces came under the jurisdiction of the Monarch. In the later stages, the territories displaced the provinces and came immediately under the Monarch. But always the result was the same. The purpose of the State was to spread out the administration in a number of diminishing authorities, resting finally on a free people in possession of the land on which the whole system was based; and to gather up that authority in tier after tier of exactly similiar [sic] organisations to the headpiece of the monarchy. Each authority was exactly the same as the one beneath it, with its elected king, bishop, brehons, poets, historians and full court, and with its Bruighin and Baile Biatach in capital townships of increasing importance. The Monarch's court was comprised exactly the same as the court of the king of a stateship, except that naturally his officers had necessarily to win higher degrees in the schools. It would seem that the schools themselves, of which the country was full and which won such fame throughout Europe that scholars from far afield came to them, were based