TOWARDS DISCOVERING THE ORIGIN AND COURSE OF BY W. COOKE TAYLOR, ESQ. LL.D. M.R.A.S. OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. VOL. I. HOMO SUM: HUMANI NIHIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO.-TERENCE. LONDON: LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS. 1840. TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, RICHARD, LORD ARCHBISHOP of Dublin, AND PRIMATE OF IRELAND. MY LORD, THIS book is yours; you suggested, encouraged, and to a great degree directed it, you may therefore claim its patronage as matter of right. Were the case otherwise, I should scarcely have ventured to obtrude my homage, because I should fear my power to control my feelings. To your Grace's friendship I owe incentives to exertion, motives for confidence, and fresh grounds of hope, inexpressibly precious to the labourer in the field of literature, who must pass through many dark and stormy days before he can expect the seed he has sown to produce even a scanty harvest. The language of gratitude, if warm, would savour of adulation, and be rejected by you; if cold, it would too closely resemble ingratitude to be adopted by me. I lay my work before you therefore with such silent and reverential feelings as best beseems the position of the obliged and the benefactor; but I cannot abstain from uttering my ardent prayer that you may long continue to be the ornament and the hope of our common church, our common country, and our common nature. I have the honour to be Your GRACE'S Grateful and obliged servant, 34, Arlington Street, Camden Town, Sept. 25th, 1840. W. COOKE TAYLOR. PREFACE. THIS work was suggested by the Archbishop of Dublin, and it has had throughout the benefit of His Grace's assistance and superintendence. It is necessary that this should be emphatically stated, in order that the Author may escape the imputation of presumption in discussing a subject to which His Grace had already directed his attention in his Lectures on Political Economy. He would not have attempted "to bend the bow of Ulysses," had he not been invited to the task by its legitimate owner, and taught by him how to draw the string and aim the shaft. His Grace, however, is not responsible for more than general directions; he has strong claims on the merits of the work, but all its imperfections rest on the Author's head. The design of it is to determine, from an examination of the various forms in which society has been found, what was the origin of civilization; and under what circumstances those attributes of humanity which in one country become the foundation of social happiness, are in another perverted to the production of general misery. For this purpose the Author has separately examined the principal elements by which society, under all its aspects, is held together, and traced each to its |