law-makers of the people, and whose decision was appealed to in all
matters of dispute. The most serious flaw of the system--a very serious
one it will be seen--was that, owing to the scattered and tribal
existence prevailing, there was no strong central rule _behind_ the
Brehon, as there is behind the modern judge, ready and able to enforce
his decrees. At bottom, force, it must not be forgotten, is the sanction
of all law, and there was no available force of any kind then, nor for
many a long day afterwards, in Ireland.

It was, no doubt, owing chiefly to this defective weakness that a system
of fines rather than punishments grew up, one which in later times
caused much scandal to English legal writers. In such a society crime in
fact was hardly recognizable except in the form of an injury inflicted
upon some person or persons. An offence against the State there could
not be, simply because there was no State to be offended. Everything,
from murder down to the smallest and most accidental injury, was
compensated for by "erics" or fines. The amount of these fines was
decided upon by the Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number of
imaginary rulings, descending into the most minute particulars, such as
what fine was to be paid in the case of one person's cat stealing milk
from another person's house, what fine in the case of one woman's bees
stinging another woman, a careful distinction being preserved in this
case between the case in which the sting did or did not draw blood! Even
in the matter of fines it does not seem clear how the penalty was to be
enforced where the person on whom it was inflicted refused to submit and
where there was no one at hand to coerce him successfully.

As regards ownership of land early Irish law is very peculiar, and
requires to be carefully studied. Primogeniture, regarded by all English
lawyers trained under the feudal system as the very basis of