A new edition of Toland's History of the druids: - Free History Ebooks

418 NOTES.historians have here acted very uncandidly, in withholding thetrue cause, and only stating its effects. But the truth is, thereign of Concovar coincides with that of the Emperor Claudius,who completed the expulsion of the Druids from Gaul and Bri«tain. Ciesar, instead of conquering Britain, only pointed it outto his successors.His immediate successors, Augustus, Tiberius,and Caligula, made no attempt on Britain.Claudius succeededto the empire in 41, and in 43 made a conquest of the greaterpart of the island.The cruel edicts of Tiberius probably reachedonly the Druids in Gaul, and drove them over to Britain; butClaudius completed their extirpation, and compelled them totake refuge in Ireland. The influx of the Druids of Gaul andBritain must have produced a strong sensation in Ireland.Thetraditionary laws, suited to the local peculiarities of the differentdistricts of Gaul and Britain, perhaps ill accorded with those ofIreland ; and as this little island must now have been greatly overstockedwith Druids, every one of whom would persist in interpretingthe traditionary laws, according to the meaning whichthty bore in that peculiar district, from which he had emigrated^the confusion was irretrievable;and the Irish, who had withoutreluctance submitted tothe interpretation of their own Druids,fpurned that of foreigners as novel, and by no means suitedtotheir peculiar circumstances. The selection of the most eminentDruids to compile, and commit to writing, a new code oflaws, was a measure dictated no less by sound policy than byimperious necessity.The different laws made hy Tuathal, Cor^mac, he. to restrain thelicence of the Bards, and preserve thehistory of Ireland pure and incorrupted, owed their origin to thesame cause. The historical records of Gaul and Britain wereunquestionably more ancient than those of Ireland; and havingbeen conveyed thither by the Druids, expelled from Gaul andBritain, the Irish history run the risk of being completely super,seded, or &t least greatly intermixed. Concovar carried hismeasures no farther than to compile a new body of laws, butTuathal appointed the compilation of a new history, and in HI