The sources of Lectures on the Early History of Institutions

1. Senchus Mor unknown compilers of the Irish Brehon tradition 6 authority · 2 neutral 8 citations · 12 passages

   ch. 2 3 passages anchored here · ch. 3 3 passages anchored here · ch. 6 · ch. 7 · ch. 9 · ch. 10 · ch. 11 2 passages anchored here

   Repeatedly cited as the central primary legal text and its origin legend discussed in depth.

   This is the Cain Patraic, and no human Brehon of the Gaedhil is able to abrogate anything that is found in the Senchus Mor.

2. Book of Aicill unknown compilers of the Irish Brehon tradition 5 authority · 1 neutral 6 citations · 9 passages

   ch. 2 · ch. 3 4 passages anchored here · ch. 7 · ch. 8 3 passages anchored here

   Explicitly cited and dated as a primary legal text.

   The Book of Aicill is probably the oldest, and its text is avowedly composed of the dicta of two famous lawyers, Cormac and Cennfaeladh.

3. Ancient Law Henry Sumner Maine 1 authority · 4 extended 5 citations · 6 passages

   ch. 1 · ch. 4 · ch. 8 2 passages anchored here · ch. 9 · ch. 10

   Explicitly named as the earlier work the Lectures build on.

   There were, however, other causes than those just stated which led to the great development of Primogeniture in the early part of the Middle Ages, but for an examination of them I may be allowed to refer to the work of mine which I mentioned above.

4. Jeremy Bentham 1 authority · 2 neutral · 1 extended 4 citations · 7 passages

   ch. 4 · lecture xii.: sovereignty. 2 passages anchored here · ch. 14 4 passages anchored here

   The passage references this well-known utilitarian formula and its author without naming him directly, reporting it as a historical consequence.

   By the time Bentham wrote, and while he was writing, the conditions which suggest the Analytical System of Jurisprudence presented themselves still more distinctly.

5. Thomas Hobbes 1 authority · 2 extended · 1 endorsed 4 citations · 6 passages

   lecture xii.: sovereignty. · ch. 14 5 passages anchored here

   Cited alongside the Leviathan as an authoritative early source for the analysis of Government and Sovereignty.

   In his ‘Dialogue of the Common Laws,’ he argues for a fusion of law and equity, a registration of titles to land, and a systematic penal code—three measures which we are on the eve of seeing carried out at this very moment.

6. Gaius 3 authority 3 citations · 9 passages

   ch. 10 6 passages anchored here · ch. 11 · ch. 12 2 passages anchored here

   The treatise of Gaius is the central primary source analyzed and cited throughout the lecture.

   Gaius, speaking of the Legis Actiones generally, observes that ‘they fell into discredit, because through the excessive subtlety of the ancient lawyers, things came to such a pass that he who committed the smallest error failed altogether.

7. Henry Sumner Maine 1 authority · 2 extended 3 citations

   ch. 3 · ch. 4 2 passages anchored here

   The author explicitly cites his own earlier book by title and page number as a prior treatment of the topic.

   I have attempted in another work (‘Village-Communities in the East and West,’ pp.

8. Julius Caesar 3 authority 3 citations

   ch. 3 · ch. 6 · ch. 9

   The passage cites 'B. G.' with book and section numbers twice, referring to Caesar's Gallic War.

   He, a Roman, familiar with a Patria Potestas as yet undecayed, thinks it worthy of remark that the head of a Gallic household had the power of life and death over his wives as well as his children, and notices with astonishment that, when a husband died under suspicious circumstances, his wives were treated with the same cruelty as a body of household slaves at Rome whose master had been killed by an unknown hand.

9. A View of the State of Ireland Edmund Spenser 1 authority · 1 neutral · 1 refuted 3 citations · 5 passages

   ch. 2 · ch. 8 · ch. 11 3 passages anchored here

   The author explicitly anticipates hesitation in repeating Spenser's invectives, disputing their fairness.

   Edmund Spenser has spoken of it, in his ‘View of the State of Ireland,’ and here is the passage:

10. Corus Bescna Brehon textwriters (anonymous) 3 neutral 3 citations · 5 passages

    ch. 3 · ch. 5 3 passages anchored here · ch. 8

    The Corus Bescna is directly named and its content extensively summarized and analyzed.

    The chief Brehon law-tract, which sets forth the mutual rights of the collective tribe and of individual tribesmen or households of tribesmen in respect of tribal property, is called the Corus Bescna, and is printed in the Third Volume of the official edition.

11. Twelve Tables of Rome early Roman lawgivers 2 authority · 1 neutral 3 citations · 4 passages

    ch. 2 · ch. 10 2 passages anchored here · ch. 12

    Named as the historical precedent structurally paralleling the Irish material.

    you must call them trees, because the text of the Twelve Tables spoke only of trees.

12. Ancient Laws of Ireland Editors of the official edition 1 authority · 1 extended 2 citations · 5 passages

    ch. 5 3 passages anchored here · ch. 11 2 passages anchored here

    Cited by volume and page multiple times as the primary published legal source.

    So far as we are able, amid the disadvantages under which we are placed by the obscurity of our authorities, let us examine the legal qualities which the ancient Irish law attributes to this brotherhood of kinsmen as it was found in Ireland.

13. Brehon law tracts Brehon law tradition (anonymous ancient Irish jurists) 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations · 4 passages

    ch. 7 2 passages anchored here · ch. 8 2 passages anchored here

    The Brehon law tracts are repeatedly cited as the legal source for tenant obligations and evaluated for reliability.

    It may be so to some extent, but the careful student of the Brehon tracts will be inclined to think that the general bias of their writers was rather towards exaggeration of the privileges of Chiefs than towards overstatement of the immunities of tribesmen.

14. Commentaries on the Laws of England Blackstone 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

    ch. 11 · ch. 14

    Blackstone is invoked as an authoritative legal commentator on the hazards of English distress law.

    Nay, those very subtleties of old English law which, as Blackstone says, made the taking of distress ‘a hazardous sort of proceeding’ to the civil distrainor, might bring an Irishman to the gallows, if in conscientiously attempting to carry out the foreign law he fell into the smallest mistake.

15. Comparative Politics Edward A. Freeman 2 authority 2 citations · 3 passages

    ch. 4 · ch. 6 2 passages anchored here

    Named directly with a page reference and quoted for its theoretical claim.

    Freeman has given of the original connection between servile status and that nobility with which the primitive nobility of birth has become mixed up and confounded.

16. Constitutional History Stubbs 2 authority 2 citations

    ch. 5 · ch. 7

    Cited explicitly by author, title, and page reference.

    and it is well known that, in the Germanic countries, their ecclesiastical societies were among the earliest and largest grantees of public or ‘folk’ land (Stubbs, ‘Constitutional History,’ vol.

17. De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae Henry de Bracton 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

    ch. 6 · ch. 8

    Named directly with a dated reference to the content of his legal writing.

    Bracton, probably not later than the fifty-second year of Henry the Third, writes as if the rule of primogeniture applied universally to military tenures and generally to socage tenures.

18. Fränkische Reichs- und Gerichtsverfassung Sohm 1 authority · 1 endorsed 2 citations

    ch. 2 · ch. 8

    Explicitly named and praised as illuminating.

    but the re-examination of the written evidence respecting ancient Teutonic life and custom proceeds without intermission, and incidentally much light has been thrown on the early history of property by the remarkable work of Sohm (‘Fränkische Reichs-und Gerichtsverfassung’).

19. History of Scotland Mr. Burton 1 authority · 1 endorsed 2 citations

    ch. 3 · ch. 8

    Burton's book is directly named with a page citation and its content discussed.

    Burton (‘History of Scotland,’ ii.

20. Indian Penal Code British Indian legislature 1 neutral · 1 refuted 2 citations · 3 passages

    ch. 3 · ch. 11 2 passages anchored here

    Explicitly cited as a legal authority that prohibits the custom being discussed.

    This is the view taken of it by the Indian Penal Code, which condemns it in the following terms (s.

21. Madras High Court Reports 2 authority 2 citations

    ch. 5 · ch. 12

    Cited explicitly by title, volume, and page as the source of a summarized legal decision.

    The whole law on the subject was much considered in a strange case which arose before the High Court of Madras (‘Madras High Court Reports,’ ii.

22. Primitive Marriage Mr. McLennan 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

    ch. 8 · ch. 10

    The work is explicitly named as containing the fullest account of the relevant theory.

    McLennan’s most original work on Primitive Marriage.

23. Province of Jurisprudence Determined John Austin 2 extended 2 citations · 15 passages

    lecture xii.: sovereignty. 5 passages anchored here · ch. 14 10 passages anchored here

    Austin's treatise is repeatedly invoked as the authoritative source of the doctrine of Sovereignty being expounded and critically extended.

    At first sight, there could be no more perfect embodiment than Runjeet Singh of Sovereignty, as conceived by Austin.

24. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity in the Human Family Lewis Morgan 1 neutral · 1 extended 2 citations · 3 passages

    ch. 4 2 passages anchored here · ch. 8

    Morgan's book is named directly, quoted, and its findings are used to extend the author's own argument.

    Lewis Morgan, of New York, the author of a remarkable and very magnificent volume on ‘Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity in the Human Family,’ published by the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, reckons no less than ten stages (p.

122 sources are named once. Each stands in the run of its own chapter, below — in the order of the text.