Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/71

 begun, till there was a central authority strong enough to make the parts out of earlier, more independent units, and frame them into a national whole. That central authority will again be necessary; and in asking the question, of what sort shall it be, it will be well to suppose nothing but to begin from the beginnings.

Never in the history of the Irish Nation (if we except the Parliament of 1689, which was framed on earlier models drawn from other than Irish sources) has any body ever sat at all similar to a modern Parliament. In the old Irish State the elected monarch convened great councils charged with special functions and duties. There was a council of brehons, a council of administrative rulers, a council of historians, or public recorders, and a council of poets—all of them public officials, with their parts to play in their various stateships Each council decided in its own affairs, and where necessary, for instance as between rulers and brehons, or brehons and recorders, the monarch wrought harmony between their decisions for the smooth working of the State. But that is not to say that, if the Nation had been left free to develop and augment its own polity, something in the nature of an assembly drawn from popular sources would not have been found necessary to assist or displace the monarch and his personal council. Had it been possible to create such an assembly early a central stability would have existed, drawn from all the parts of the State and therefore holding all the parts together, that would have provided the State with