ough the title after
all. If the reader wants the rest of it, as also the substantial Act
itself, whereof it is the title, let him turn to the 23d of Geo. II.,
chap. 26.

No wonder, if he anticipated this sort of thing, that Bacon should have
commended "the excellent brevity of the old Scots acts." Here, for
instance, is a specimen, an actual statute at large, such as they were
in those pigmy days:--

"Item, it is statute that gif onie of the King's lieges passes in
England, and resides and remains there against the King's will, he shall
be halden as Traiter to the King."

Here is another, very comprehensive, and worth a little library of
modern statute-books, if it was duly enforced:--

"Item, it is statute and ordained, that all our Sovereign lord's lieges
being under his obeisance, and especially the Isles, be ruled by our
Sovereign lord's own laws, and the common laws of the realm, and none
other laws."

The Irish statute-book conveys more expressively than any narrative the
motley contrasts of a history in the fabric of which the grotesque and
the tragic are so closely interwoven. So early as the middle of the
sixteenth century, English statesmen discover usquebaugh, and pass an
act to extinguish it at once: "forasmuch as _aqua vitae_, a drink nothing
profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout
this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the
Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen, and thereby much corn,
grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted," and so forth.

To get men to shave and wash themselves, and generally to conform to the
standard of civilisation in their day, seems innocent if not laudable;
yet is there a world of heartburning, strife, oppression, and
retaliatory hatred expressed in the title of "an act, that the Irishmen
dwelling in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Uriell, and Kildare, shall go
apparelled like Englishmen, and wear their beards after the English
manner, swear allegiance, and take English surnames." Further on we have
a whole series of acts, with a conjunction of epithets in their titles
which, at the present day, sounds rather startling, "for the better
suppressing Tories, Robbers, and Rapparees, and for preventing
robberies, burglaries, and other heinous crimes." The classes so
associated having an unreasonable dislike of being killed, difficulties
are thus put in the way of those beneficially employed in killing them,