all poffible purpofes-there are points or occafions in which a temporary equality muft take place; or confution, injury, and tyranny will enfue. All children at their birth should be treated with equal care; though not of equal value. This may be called, and indeed it feems to be, the only ftate of natural equa lity. In civil adjudications, all men fhould have the fame confideration and attention, until the variations of their merits, or demerits appear:--and this is their state of civil equality. In the original arrangements of government; or in thofe repeated and general acts of the community which require the fuffrages of all its members; differences and inequalities of men, either by nature, or by the accidents and intercourfes of civil fociety, must be fufpended -all must be treated as equal, until the fuffrages determine a ftate of political inequality.'

The difference of monarchy and republic, as they actually exift, I would take in the following manner, the prince in a monarchy, acts for himself and from his own will; under the restriction of fome forms :-in republics, the parts of the political body are fo aukwardly arranged, that no general motion can be obtained, without continued and tedious efforts. The former is a head harralling the members under its command; the latter, an uncouth unmanageable body, without a head. It would require no great wifdom, to create the intire political being. That has been attempted in England: but with what fuccefs, we shall fee, in the proper place.'

It will be obvious to a common reader, that in the first paragraph our author confounds natural and political equality; and indeed he fays no more than that the natural equality of a moment calls for equal care, and that there is also a period, when every man, as a virtuous citizen, is politically equal. No -argument for inequality ever oppofed either pofition.

As a fpecimen of what we have obferved of the captious fpitit of our author, we fhall extract his remark on Montesquieu's idea of political liberty, as confifting in the proper diftribution of three powers.

Political or conftitational liberty, according to my idea, confifts in the fecurity which the whole community has referved, that its government, formed of three, feven, nine, or any magic number of powers, cannot with impunity purfue any interefts feparate from thofe of the public.'

A very fmall fhare of judgment might have shown, that this fecurity, referved by the community, is not confiftent with a great number of powers; for, if they were multiplied beyond a certain extent, they would form a conteft of jarring members. If a monarch (according to the idea of the idolater of liberty) is the conftant enemy, the haraffer' of the people, commen 'fenfe

fenfe will admit only of one umpire, one connecting medium, or one regulating power. Nothing can be added on this fubject to what Mr. Adams has fo ably urged in his late work.-once more our author is fpeaking of the judicial privileges of the houfe of peers.

Thofe who attend flightly to the early records of England, muft difcern the difference between the affembly which affifted the king to form regulations or laws; and the general folkmote, or affembly of the whole nation, to which all appeals were made, on the apprehenfion of abuses in the executive or legiflative powers. In this affembly, all orders were blended; the king and the nobles, having only the rank of freeholders. In a ftate of fimple and virtuous manners-I fpeak of political manners only-abufes were fo uncommon, that the folk-mote appeared unneceffary; and the trouble or expence of attending it being confiderable; thofe only who were in eafy circumstances, or were ftimulated by a love of power, would be likely to com pofe it. We find intimations, in early writers, which fully warrant this fuppofition. For they hint at numerous com plaints, that the inferior freeholders were negligent in their attendance, or confidered it a burthenfome duty. Even the nobility were fo little aware of the privilege of monopolizing the bufinefs of the folk-mote, that they often devifed methods to force the freeholders to fubmit to the common inconvenience. At that period, the political liberty of the nation was loft. For having no idea, perhaps, of acting by delegation; having none which extended further than the conftitution of a legiflative af fembly the inferior freeholders, by deferting the folk-mote, gave up that controul, which the people fhould poffefs over. 11 branches of government in every free ftate..

Things were in that condition, when the Norman conquest annihilated popular power. The affembly of the nobles, in which the king prefided, conftituted the government. And when oppreffion produced claims for the restoration of the Saxon conftitution; it was effected reluctantly and imperfectly. The tight of appeal from the decifions of inferior courts, which had been to the general affembly of the nation, according to the ge nuine fpirit of the Saxon government; was directed to the body of nobles, where it had been found by the Conqueror, from the negligence or indolence of the Saxon freeholders.

This appears to be the hiftory of the high privilege enjoyed by the houfe of lords, of rejudging caufe, and of confirming or reverfing deci ees. The lords act as English freeholders; as every English freeholder has a right to act, according to the original plan of the English conftitution. They formed the only remnant of the great folk-mote, at the Conquest; and the fame fpirit of liberty which claimed a right of appeal to them, if it had been inftructed, would have infifted on that of appeal ing to the whole nation, or to an affembly formed out of it, wholly for that purpose.'

If from this reprefentation it be contended that the folk-mote conftituted the house of commons, we fufpect it to be erroneous: the folk-mote was only, we apprehend, a county-court to confider of the minuter politics of the district; and there are good arguments which have been adduced by authors, particularly by fir H. Spelman, to induce us to believe that the folk-mote was compofed only of the leffer barons, the tenants in capite. At any rate, it is improper to confound the folk-mote with the parliament, which, in Saxon authors, is always ftyled the wittenegamote, or meeting of the wife men, the michel-gemote, the great meeting, or the michel-fynoth, the great council. It is probable, when in the time of John, and afterwards more clearly, in the reign of Henry III. writs were directed for the choice of knights, that the election was held in the county-courts. Some have thought that every individual was then allowed to be prefent, others have confined this privilege to the leffer barons; but it seems not to have been clearly afcertained till the statute in the eighth of Henry VI.

On the whole, we cannot highly commend this volume. Montesquieu has undoubtedly many errors, and these our author has fometimes pointed out with propriety; but we differ often from Mr. Williams on conftitutional, and sometimes on other points, and, in a few instances, he is guilty of the error which he reprehends.

An Enquiry into the Hiftory of Scotland preceding the Reign of Malcolm III. in the Year 1056. By John Pinkerton. (Concluded, from p. 22.)

THE great object of our enterprifing author, we have faid,

was to fhow, that the Highlanders and the inhabitants of the Western Islands are of Celtic origin. With this view, the Celts are depreciated below the meaneft race of human favages, and their defcendants overwhelmed with all the ignominy which hiftory or tradition can heap on the progenitors. In this conclufion, after the matureft confideration and the moft extenfive examination, we think our author is mistaken; and the Highlanders are neither proved to be Celts, nor were the Celts the despicable race which Mr. Pinkerton is fond of representing them. Yet, in the course of his Enquiry, he has elucidated many doubtful fubjects, he has deftroyed manyfabulous hydras, and has placed the antiquities of these islande on a foundation at once rational and stable.

The present Highlanders are the defcendants of Piks and of Dalriads. Mr. Pinkerton confiders them as Dalriads alone, who very certainly came from Ireland. The Irish origins are, therefore,

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therefore, his first object, and he examines with great care, and with his ufual difcriminating feverity, the fables of the Milefians, the Firbolg, and the Tuath de Danan. The other tales are beneath a moment's notice; and of these, the first only appears to us wholly groundlefs. The æras are undoubtedly erroneous, and we may confider the Firbolg as the Belge, and the Danan", the Danes, the Scandinavians of the Low Country; for, in this view, the Scandinavians of Denmark feem to have been diftinguished long before the time of Jornandes; and if we can fhow that Danes migrated to Ireland previous to the fixth century, we fhall render our author's other arguments of lefs value. The pretenfions of Ireland to a very early antiquity, and to the use of letters, feem to reft on the fame foundation. Letters were introduced by, or very near to, the period of their tutelar faint, and the Bethlius-nion, Mr. Pinkerton tells us, is only the Saxon alphabet in an inverted order: the different kinds of Ogum are only short-hands of the middle ages, and the Bebeloth fimilar to the Note Longobardicæ,

Ireland, the old British Yverdon (western ille) or the Gothic Iber Ey (the further ifland) was certainly peopled by a Celtic race, which, as ufual, were conquered by a Gothic colony. This colony, our author fuppofes, did not come from Spain but from Gaul, and there feems no evidence of the Spaniards having colonized Ireland, and given it the name of Iberia, from Iberi. There is fome foundation indeed for believing that fome of the Iberi migrated to the fouth of Ireland, and carried there their peculiar features, their fwarthy colour, and their manners; but the number was not great, and, in a general view, it may be wholly neglected. With thefe the Celts of Britain may have been joined, as well as the Cumri of the northern parts of the island, to whom our author reluctantly allows a greater prowess than the Gallic Celts poffeffed. But while we admit the poffibility of this union, there is no direct evidence of it; for Richard of Cirencester, who tells us that thefe are the Scoti, is evidently mistaken, fince we have shown that the Scoti were Scyti, or Scythians. The Belge then certainly peopled the fouth, and probably the western part of Ireland; fo that we must pay our principal attention to the north.

We have formerly traced the Piks to the Western Islands from Scandinavia, from whence they feem to have extended their conquefts, till they obtained the whole of Caledonia.

These are the Dannana, which O'Flaherty tells us paffed into Ireland from the northern parts of Britain, under Miadus. The fact of a colony is well fupported, but there is no evidence of their coming from Britain, There

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There is no evidence that they ever abandoned these islands; and Mr. Pinkerton will not for a moment allow, that they were conquered by either the Cumri or the Scoti. It is more reasonable, therefore, that their defcendants fhould have peopled the neighbouring Highlands, than that they should have been relinquished to be again colonized by a race of Celts, who, preffed on by the Belge till they reached the western coafts, again rebounded to the eastern, and to a country from whence they had been before driven. Befides, if fimilar caufes produced fimilar effects, we fhould look for the Celta on the hores of the Atlantic rather than in the North. To thefe probable circumstances we may add the testimony of Bede, who tells us of fome Piks coming from Scandinavia, probably to the Hebudes, who were driven to the northern coaft of Ireland, where they found their countrymen the Scoti (Scythians) whofe language they understood, whofe manners were the fame, and with whofe daughters they intermarried. This was not long before the expedition to the western coast of Scotland under Reuda, and reprefented by this author, the fafest guide in thefe refearches, to have been undertaken by this united colony. If, therefore, the western coafts had been peopled by the Hebudæ, it feems to have been only in part, and the Piks from Ireland or from Scandinavia would probably foon coalefce and become one nation. As we have feen that the fouth, the caft, and the northern parts of Ireland were colonized by Belga, or by Piks, as Piks from Scandinavia peopled the Western Ifles and the firft colony of Scoti, the origin of Dalriads were apparently of the fame nation, we have no reafon for fuppofing any part of the western inhabitants of Scotland were Celts; and Mr. Pinkerton, after first giving his opinion with his usual pofitiveness, is ingenuous enough to subjoin facts fufficient to deftroy it in the course of his history. We do not recollect indeed that he ever mentions the quotation we have just given from Bede, but our author has noticed this paffage, fince he has quoted the obfervations of Bede a few lines farther on. If this, however, is omitted, it may be confidered as disingenuous, but it is the only, or almoft the only, inftance of this kind in his whole work. Stillingfeet he has indeed mentioned, but why fhould he have kept in the back-ground an author where the outline of his whole fyftem may be found? The refemblance could not, we think, be accidental only.

If Ireland is, therefore, principally peopled by Scythian nations, differing only as they come from Scandinavia or Gaul, it is very remarkable that they should retain the Celtic Janguage. This, we own, was for a time a great obftacle, and we yielded only to the force of the evidence which we have