waged constant war on each other--or that the appointment of the
chieftains was elective--do not appear sufficient reasons, although
these are the only ones assigned by those who have been at the
trouble of considering the subject: neither are the confiscations
of property quite sufficient to account for the effect. There have
been great confiscations in other countries, and still they have
flourished; the petty states of Greece were quite analogous to the
chiefries, as they were called, in Ireland; and yet they seemed to
flourish almost in proportion to their dissensions. Poland felt the
bad effects of an elective monarchy more than any other country; and
yet, in point of civilisation, it maintained a very respectable rank
among the nations of Europe; but Ireland never, for an instant, made
any progress in improvement, till the reign of James I.

"It is scarcely credible, that in a climate like that of Ireland,
and at a period so far advanced in civilisation as the end of
Elizabeth's reign, the greater part of the natives should go naked.
Yet this is rendered certain by the testimony of an eye-witness,
Fynes Moryson. 'In the remote parts,' he says, 'where the English
laws and manners are unknown, the very chief of the Irish, as well
men as women, go naked in the winter time, only having their privy
parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose
mantle. This I speak of my own experience; yet remember that a
Bohemian baron coming out of Scotland to us by the north parts of
the wild Irish, told me in great earnestness, that he, coming to the
house of O'Kane, a great lord amongst them, was met at the door by
sixteen women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles, whereof
eight or ten were very fair; with which strange sight his eyes being
dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by the
fire, with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not but