The Glories Of Ireland Part 5

PHYSICISTS.

Lord Kelvin, better known as Sir William Thompson (b. Belfast 1824, d. 1907), F.R.S. Amongst the greatest physicists who have ever lived, his name comes second only to that of Newton. He was educated at Cambridge, became professor of natural philosophy in Glasgow University in 1846, and celebrated the jubilee of his appointment in 1896. To the public his greatest achievement was the electric cabling of the Atlantic Ocean, for which he was knighted in 1866. His electrometers and electric meters, his sounding apparatus, and his mariners' compa.s.s are all well-known and highly valued instruments.

To his scientific fellows, however, his greatest achievements were in the field of pure science, especially in connection with his thermodynamic researches, including the doctrine of the dissipation or degradation of energy. To this brief statement may be added mention of his work in connection with hydrodynamics and his magnetic and electric discoveries. His papers in connection with wave and vortex movements are also most remarkable. He was awarded the Royal and Copley medals and was an original member of the Order of Merit.

He received distinctions from many universities and learned societies.

George Francis Fitzgerald (b. Dublin 1851, d. 1901), F.R.S., was fellow and professor of natural philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin, where he was educated. He was the first person to call the attention of the world to the importance of Hertz's experiment.

Perhaps his most important work, interrupted by his labors in connection with education and terminated by his early death, was that in connection with the nature of the ether.

George Johnston Stoney (b. King's Co. 1826, d. 1911), F.R.S., after being astronomer at Parsonstown and professor of natural philosophy at Galway, became secretary to the Queen's University and occupied that position until the dissolution of the university in 1882. He wrote many papers on geometrical optics and on molecular physics, but his great claim to remembrance is that he first suggested, "on the basis of Faraday's law of Electrolysis, that an absolute unit of quant.i.ty of electricity exists in that amount of it which attends each chemical bond or valency and gave the name, now generally adopted, of electron to this small quant.i.ty." He proposed the electronic theory of the origin of the complex ether vibrations which proceed from a molecule emitting light.

John Tyndall (b. Leighlin Bridge, Co. Carlow, 1820, d. 1893), F.R.S., professor at the Royal Inst.i.tution and a fellow-worker in many ways with Huxley, especially on the subject of glaciers. He wrote also on heat as a mode of motion and was the author of many scientific papers, but will, perhaps, be best remembered as the author of a Presidential Address to the British a.s.sociation in Belfast (1874), which was the highwater mark of the mid-Victorian materialism at its most triumphant moment.

CHEMISTS.

Richard Kirwan (b. Galway 1733, d. 1812), F.R.S. A man of independent means, he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and mineralogy and was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society. He published works on mineralogy and on the a.n.a.lysis of mineral waters, and was the first in Ireland to publish a.n.a.lyses of soils for agricultural purposes, a research which laid the foundation of scientific agriculture in Great Britain and Ireland.

Maxwell Simpson (b. Armagh 1815, d. 1902), F.R.S., held the chair of chemistry in Queen's College, Cork, for twenty years and published a number of papers in connection with his subject and especially with the behavior of cyanides, with the study of which compounds his name is most a.s.sociated.

Cornelius O'Sullivan (b. Brandon, 1841, d. 1897), F.R.S., was for many years chemist to the great firm of Ba.s.s & Co., brewers at Burton-on-Trent, and in that capacity became one of the leading exponents of the chemistry of fermentation in the world.

James Emerson Reynolds (b. Dublin 1844), F.R.S., professor of chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin, for many years, discovered the primary thiocarbamide and a number of other chemical substances, including a new cla.s.s of colloids and several groups of organic and other compounds of the element silicon.

Among others only the names of the following can be mentioned:--Sir Robert Kane (b. Dublin 1809, d. 1890), professor of chemistry in Dublin and founder and first director of the Museum of Industry, now the National Museum. He was president of Queen's College, Cork, as was William K. Sullivan (b. Cork 1822, d. 1890), formerly professor of chemistry in the Catholic University. Sir William O'Shaughnessy Brooke, F.R.S. (b. Limerick 1809, d. 1889), professor of chemistry and a.s.say master in Calcutta, is better known as the introducer of the telegraphic system into India and its first superintendent.

BIOLOGISTS.

William Henry Harvey (b. Limerick 1814, d. 1866), F.R.S., was a botanist of very great distinction. During a lengthy residence in South Africa, he made a careful study of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope and published _The Genera of South African Plants_. After this he was made keeper of the Herbarium, Trinity College, Dublin, but, obtaining leave of absence, travelled in North and South America, exploring the coast from Halifax to the Keys of Florida, in order to collect materials for his great work, _Nereis Boreali-Americana_, published by the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution.

Subsequently he visited Ceylon, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Friendly and Fiji Islands, collecting algae. The results were published in his _Phycologia Australis_. At the time of his death he was engaged on his _Flora Capensis_, and was generally considered the first authority on algae in the world.

William Archer (b. Co. Down 1837, d. 1897), F.R.S., devoted his life to the microscopic examination of freshwater organisms, especially desmids and diatoms. He attained a very prominent place in this branch of work among men of science. Perhaps his most remarkable discovery was that of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides (in 1868), "one of the most remarkable and enigmatical of all known microscopic organisms."

George James Allman (b. Cork 1812, d. 1898), F.R.S., professor of botany in Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwarls Regius Professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh, published many papers on botanical and zoological subjects, but his great work was that on the gymn.o.blastic Hydrozoa, "without doubt the most important systematic work dealing with the group of Coelenterata that has ever been produced."

Amongst eminent living members of the cla.s.s under consideration may be mentioned Alexander Macalister (b. Dublin 1844), F.R.S., professor of anatomy, first in Dublin and now in Cambridge, an eminent morphologist and anthropologist, and Henry Horatio Dixon (b. Dublin), F.R.S., professor of botany in Trinity College, an authority on vegetable physiology, especially problems dealing with the sap.

GEOLOGISTS.

Samuel Haughton (b. Carlow 1821, d. 1897), F.R.S., after earning a considerable reputation as a mathematician and a geologist, and taking Anglican orders, determined to study medicine and entered the school of that subject in Trinity College. After graduating he became the reformer, it might even be said the re-founder, of that school.

He devoted ten years to the study of the mechanical principles of muscular action, and published his _Animal Mechanism_, probably his greatest work. He will long be remembered as the introducer of the "long drop" as a method of capital execution. He might have been placed in several of the categories which have been dealt with, but that of geologist has been selected, since in the later part of his most versatile career he was professor of geology in Trinity College, Dublin.

Valentine Ball (b. Dublin 1843, d. 1894), F.R.S., a brother of Sir Robert, joined the Geological Survey of India, and in that capacity became an authority not only on geology but also on ornithology and anthropology. His best known work is _Jungle-Life in India_. In later life he was director of the National Museum, Dublin.

MEDICAL SCIENCE.

Very brief note can be taken of the many s.h.i.+ning lights in Irish medical science. Robert James Graves (1796-1853), F.R.S., after whom is named "Graves's Disease", was one of the greatest of clinical physicians. His _System of Clinical Medicine_ was a standard work and was extolled by Trousseau, the greatest physician that France has ever had, in the highest terms of appreciation.

William Stokes (1804-1878), Regius Professor of Medicine in Trinity College, and the author of a _Theory and Practice of Medicine_, known all over the civilized world, was equally celebrated.

To these must be added Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), the first Catholic to occupy the position of President of the College of Physicians in Dublin, an authority on heart disease, and the first adequate describer of aortic patency, a form of ailment long called "Corrigan's Disease". "Colles's Fracture" is a familiar term in the mouths of surgeons. It derives its name from Abraham Colles (1773-1843), the first surgeon in the world to tie the innominate artery, as "Butcher's Saw", a well-known implement, does from another eminent surgeon; Richard Butcher, Regius Professor in Trinity College in the seventies of the last century.

Sir Rupert Boyce (1863-1911), F.R.S., though born in London, had an Irish father and mother. Entering the medical profession, he was a.s.sistant professor of pathology at University College, London, and subsequently professor of pathology in University College, Liverpool, which he was largely instrumental in turning into the University of Liverpool. He was foremost in launching and directing the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which has had such widespread results all over the world in elucidating the problems and checking the ravages of the diseases peculiar to hot countries. It was for his services in this direction that he was knighted in 1906.

Sir Richard Quain (b. Mallow 1816, d. 1898), F.R.S., spent most of his life in London, where he was for years the most prominent physician. He wrote on many subjects, but the _Dictionary of Medicine_, which he edited and which bears his name, has made itself and its editor known all over the world.

Sir Almroth Wright (b. 1861), F.R.S., is the greatest living authority on the important subject of vaccino-therapy, which, indeed, may be said to owe its origin to his researches, as do the methods for measuring the protective substances in the human blood. He was the discoverer of the anti-typhoid injection which has done so much to stay the ravages of that disease.

ENGINEERING.

Bindon Blood Stoney (1828-1909), F.R.S., made his reputation first as an astronomer by discovering the spiral character of the great nebula in Andromeda. Turning to engineering, he was responsible for the construction of many important works, especially in connection with the port of Dublin. He was brother of G. J. Stoney.

Sir Charles Parsons (b. 1854), F.R.S., fourth son of the third Earl of Rosse, is the engineer who developed the steam turbine system and made it suitable for the generation of electricity, and for the propulsion of war and mercantile vessels. If he has revolutionized traffic on the water, so on the land has John Boyd Dunlop (still living), who discovered the pneumatic tire with such wide-spread results for motorcars, bicycles, and such means of locomotion.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock (b. Dundalk 1819, d. 1907), F.R.S., was one of the great Arctic explorers, having spent eleven navigable seasons and six winters in those regions. He was the chief leader and organizer of the Franklin searches. From the scientific point of view he made a valuable collection of miocene fossils from Greenland, and enabled Haughton to prepare the geological map and memoir of the Parry Archipelago.

John Ball (b. Dublin 1818, d. 1889), F.R.S., educated at Oscott, pa.s.sed the examination for a high degree at Cambridge, but, being a Catholic, was excluded from the degree itself and any other honors which a Protestant might have attained to. He travelled widely and published many works on the natural history of Europe and South America from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. He was the first to suggest the utilization of the electric telegraph for meteorological purposes connected with storm warnings.

s.p.a.ce ought to be found for a cursory mention of that strange person, Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), who by his _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_ in 132 vols., his _Cabinet Library_, and his _Museum of Science and Art_, did much to popularize science in an unscientific day.

REFERENCES:

The princ.i.p.al sources of information are the National Dictionary of Biography; the Obituary Notices of the Royal Society (pa.s.sages in inverted commas are from these); "Who's Who" (for living persons); Healy: Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars; Hyde: Literary History of Ireland; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland; Moore: Medicine in the British Isles.

LAW IN IRELAND

By LAURENCE GINNELL, B.L., M.P.

A DISTINCTION. Ireland having been a self-ruled country for a stretch of some two thousand years, then violently brought under subjection to foreign rule, regaining legislative independence for a brief period toward the close of the eighteenth century, then by violence and corruption deprived of that independence and again brought under the same foreign rule, to which it is still subject, the expression "Law in Ireland" comprises the native and the foreign, the laws devised by the Irish Nation for its own governance and the laws imposed upon it from without: two sets, codes, or systems proper to two entirely distinct social structures having no relation and but little resemblance to each other. Whatever may be thought of either as law, the former is Irish in every sense, and vastly the more interesting historically, archaeologically, philologically, and in many other ways; the latter being English law in Ireland, and not truly Irish in any sense.

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF IRISH LAW. _Seanchus agus Feineachus na hEireann_ == _Hiberniae Antiquitates et Sanctiones Legales_--The Ancient Laws and Decisions of the _Feini_, of Ireland. _Sen_ or _sean_ (p.r.o.nounced shan) == "old," differs from most Gaelic adjectives in preceding the noun it qualifies. It also tends to coalesce and become a prefix. _Seanchus_ (shanech-us) == "ancient law." _Feineachus_ (fainech-us) == the law of the _Feini_, who were the Milesian farmers, free members of the clans, the most important cla.s.s in the ancient Irish community. Their laws were composed in their contemporary language, the _Bearla Feini_, a distinct form of Gaelic. Several nations of the Aryan race are known to have cast into metre or rhythmical prose their laws and such other knowledge as they desired to communicate, preserve, and transmit, before writing came into use. The Irish went further and, for greater facility in committing to memory and retaining there, put their laws into a kind of rhymed verse, of which they may have been the inventors. By this device, aided by the isolated geographical position of Ireland, the sanct.i.ty of age, and the apprehension that any change of word or phrase might change the law itself, these archaic laws, when subsequently committed to writing, were largely preserved from the progressive changes to which all spoken languages are subject, with the result that we have today, embedded in the Gaelic text and commentaries of the _Senchus Mor_, the _Book of Aicill_, and other law works, available in English translations made under a Royal Commission appointed by Government in 1852, and published, at intervals extending over forty years, in six volumes of "Ancient Laws and Inst.i.tutions of Ireland," a ma.s.s of archaic words, phrases, law, literature, and information on the habits and manners of the people, not equalled in antiquity, quant.i.ty, or authenticity in any other Celtic source. In English they are commonly called Brehon Laws, from the genitive case singular of _Brethem_ = "judge", genitive _Brethemain_ (p.r.o.nounced brehun), as Erin is an oblique case of Eire, and as Latin words are sometimes adopted in the genitive in modern languages which themselves have no case distinctions. It is not to be inferred from this name that the laws are judge-made. They are rather case law, in parts possibly enacted by some of the various a.s.semblies at which the laws were promulgated or rehea.r.s.ed, but for the most part simple declarations of law originating in custom and moral justice, and records of judgments based upon "the precedents and commentaries", in the sort of cases common to agricultural communities of the time, many of the provisions being as inapplicable to modern life as modern laws would be to ancient life. A reader is impressed by the extraordinary number and variety of cases with their still more numerous details and circ.u.mstances acc.u.mulated in the course of long ages, the manner in which the laws are inextricably interwoven with the interlocking clan system, and the absence of scientific arrangement or guiding principle except those of moral justice, clemency, and the good of the community. This defect in arrangement is natural in writings intended, as these were, for the use of judges and professors, experts in the subjects with which they deal, but makes the task of presenting a concise statement of them difficult and uncertain.

SOCIETY LAW. The law and the social system were inseparable parts of a complicated whole, mutually cause and consequence of each other.

_Tuath, clann, cinel, cine_, and _fine_ (p.r.o.nounced thooah, clong, kinnel, kineh, and fin-yeh) were terms used to denote a tribe or set of relatives, in reality or by adoption, claiming descent from a common ancestor, forming a community occupying and owning a given territory. _Tuath_ in course of time came to be applied indifferently to the people and to their territory. _Fine_, sometimes designating a whole tribe, more frequently meant a part of it, occupying a distinct portion of the territory, a potential microcosm or nucleus of a clan, having limited autonomy in the conduct of its own immediate affairs.

The const.i.tution of this organism, whether as contemplated by the law or in the less perfect actual practice, is alike elusive, and underwent changes. For the purpose of ill.u.s.tration, the _fine_ may be said to consist, theoretically, of the "seventeen men" frequently mentioned throughout the laws, namely, the _flaithfine_ = chief of the _fine_; the _geilfine_ = his four fullgrown sons or other nearest male relatives; the _deirbhfine, tarfine_, and _innfine_, each consisting of four heads of families in wider concentric circles of kins.h.i.+p, say first, second, and third cousins of the _flaithfine_.

The _fine_ was liable, in measure determined by those circles, for contracts, fines, and damages incurred by any of its members so far as his own property was insufficient, and was in the same degree ent.i.tled to share advantages of a like kind accruing. Intermarriage within this _fine_ was prohibited. The modern term "sept" is applied sometimes to this group and sometimes to a wider group united under a _flaith_ (flah) = "chief", elected by the _flaithfines_ and provided, for his public services, with free land proportionate to the area of the district and the number of clansmen in it. _Clann_ might mean the whole Irish nation, or an intermediate h.o.m.ogeneous group of _fines_ having for wider purposes a _flaith_ or _ri-tuatha_ = king of one _tuath_, elected by the _flaiths_ and _flaithfines_, subject to elaborate qualifications as to person, character, and training, which limited their choice, and provided with a larger portion of free land. This was the lowest chief to whom the t.i.tle _ri, righ_ (both pr. ree) = _rex_, or "king", was applied. A group of these kinglets connected by blood or territory or policy, and their _flaiths_, elected, from a still narrower circle of specially trained men within their own rank, the _ri-mor-tuatha_--king of the territory so composed, to whose office a still larger area of free land was attached. In turn, kings of this cla.s.s, with their respective sub-kings and _flaiths_, elected from among the _riogh-dhamhna_ (ree-uch-dhowna) = _materia principum_ or "king-timber", a royal _fine_ specially educated and trained, a _r-cuighidh_ (ree coo-ee-hee) supreme over five _ri-mor-tuathas_--roughly, a fourth of Ireland. These, with their respective princ.i.p.al supporters, elected the _ard-ri_--"supreme king", of Ireland, who for ages held his court and national a.s.semblies at Tara and enjoyed the kingdom of Meath for his mensal land. Usually the election was not direct to the kings.h.i.+p, but to the position of _tanaiste_--"second" (in authority), heir-apparent to the kings.h.i.+p. This was also the rule in the learned professions and "n.o.ble" arts, which were similarly endowed with free land. The most competent among those specially trained, whether son or outsider, should succeed to the position and land. All such land was legally indivisible and inalienable and descended in its entirety to the successor, who might, or might not, be a relative of the occupant. The beneficiaries were, however, free to retain any land that belonged to them as private individuals.

Members.h.i.+p of the clan was an essential qualification for every position; but occasionally two clans amalgamated, or a small _fine_, or desirable individual, was co-opted into the clan--in other words, naturalized. The rules of kins.h.i.+p determined _eineachlann_ (ain-yach-long)--"honor value", the a.s.sessed value of status, with its correlative rights, obligations, and liabilities in connection with all matters civil and criminal; largely supplied the place of contract; endowed members of the clan with birthrights; and bound them into a compact social, political, and mutual insurance copartners.h.i.+p, self-controlled and self-reliant. _Eineachlann_ rested on the two-fold basis of kins.h.i.+p and property, expanding as a clansman by acquisition of property and effluxion of time progressed upward from one grade to another; diminis.h.i.+ng if he sank; vanis.h.i.+ng if for crime he was expelled from the clan.

FOSTERAGE. To our minds, one of the most curious customs prevalent among the ancient Irish was that of _iarrad_, called also _altar_ = "fosterage"--curious in itself and in the fact that in all the abundance of law and literature relating to it no logically valid reason is given why wealthy parents normally put out their children, from one year old to fifteen in the case of a daughter and to seventeen in the case of a son, to be reared in another family, while perhaps receiving and rearing children of other parents sent to them.

As modern life does not comprise either the custom or a reason for it, we may a.s.sume that fosterage was a consequence of the clan system, and that its practice strengthened the ties of kins.h.i.+p and sympathy. This conjecture is corroborated by the numerous instances in history and in story of fosterage affection proving, when tested, stronger than the natural affection of relatives by birth. What is more, long after the dissolution of the clans, fosterage has continued stealthily in certain districts in which the old race of chiefs and clansmen contrived to cling together to the old sod; and the affection generated by it has been demonstrated, down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The present writer has heard it spoken of lovingly, in half-Irish, by simple old people, whom to question would be cruel and irreverent.

LAND LAW. The entire territory was originally, and always continued to be, the absolute property of the entire clan. Not even the private residence of a clansman, with its _maighin digona_ = little lawn or precinct of sanctuary, within which himself and his family and property were inviolable, could be sold to an outsider. Private owners.h.i.+p, though rather favored in the administration of the law, was prevented from becoming general by the fundamental owners.h.i.+p of the clan and the birthright of every free-born clansman to a sufficiency of the land of his native territory for his subsistence.

The land officially held as described was not, until the population became numerous, a serious encroachment upon this right. What remained outside this and the residential patches of private land was cla.s.sified as cultivable and uncultivable. The former was the common property of the clansmen, but was held and used in severalty for the time being, subject to _gabhail-cine_ (gowal-kinneh)--clan-resumption and redistribution by authority of an a.s.sembly of the clan or _fine_ at intervals of from one to three years, according to local customs and circ.u.mstances, for the purpose of satisfying the rights of young clansmen and dealing with any land left derelict by death or forfeiture, compensation being paid for any unexhausted improvements.

The clansmen, being owners in this limited sense, and the only owners, had no rent to pay. They paid tribute for public purposes, such as the making of roads, to the _flaith_ as a public officer, as they were bound to render, or had the privilege of rendering--according to how they regarded it--military service when required, not to the _flaith_ as a feudal lord, which he was not, but to the clan, of which the _flaith_ was head and representative.