He is a heathen, but is not addicted to the gross idolatry of other tribes. His conceptions of the unknown are spiritual, mythical and superstitious, but his mental tendency seems to have been to investigate and know the reason why for the existence of things.

This tendency led him to take the initiative in matters of discovery and invention, and his achievements in these lines were of inestimable value to the human race. He delved into the earth and discovered the metallic properties hidden therein ; extracted them from the grosser particles and adapted them to the practical purposes of life.

The Celt was the father of the Bronze Age, the first and greatest advance from savagery and barbarism toward the dawning civilization of the world.

His domestic relations, as far as we can infer from the condition in which he was found when history began to record events, was peculiar to himself at that age of the world. His family ties were tender and devoted. The wife while submitting to his authority as the head of the family was in all other respects his equal and was treated as such. Mutual respect and affectionate regard were accorded by each to the other. Their spheres of action were not specifically defined, but they went side by side into the rough turmoil of procuring a livelihood. She was his helpmate and stood loyally by him and in the emergency of battle in defense of the home she was found by his side, bludgeon in hand, dealing mighty blows upon the enemy. She was stalwart and strong and was often the better warrior of the two. Their tender regard for each other, and for their bairns, was a racial characteristic that has followed them along down the pathway of time.

It was no doubt this conjugal love, and affection for kith and kin, entering into their political emergencies that led to their peculiar form of government. As the family grew and expanded it became a clan, loyal to each other and to their kin.

Their political combinations were peculiarly democratic. The individual rights of every clansman were recognized and rigidly observed. The Chieftain was elected by the unobstructed and unawed vote of the men of the clan. Once installed in office his authority was supreme, and prompt and implicit obedience to his commands was exacted. To demur, or even hesitate, was proof of disloyalty and brought on the offender condign punishment.

But while the Chief was thus absolute in authority there were responsibilities attached to his position that it was well for him to observe. It was within his legitimate sphere of action to look after the general welfare of the clan-to select their location, define their boundaries and defend the same, to regulate their relations and intercourse with the adjoining clans, to direct and control all their movements as a body and to command and lead in battle. He was the conservator of the honor, dignity and glory of the clan and was accorded the respect and obedience due to his high rank. But with all this, the personal and individual rights of the clansmen, outside the prerogatives of the Chief must not be infringed upon or put in jeopardy.

Any act on the part of the Ruling Power to usurp authority beyond that delegated or conceded to him by their unwritten law was followed by the speedy decapitation of the offender and the election of another Chieftain. Thus ultimate authority remained with the people, and the absolute power of the Chief was only delegated to him by the people for purposes of orderly control and might be recalled at will and resumed by those in whom it originally vested. This principle in Celtic administration is older than history and has never been abandoned; nor can its existence be traced to any of the contemporaneous tribes of men.

These pioneer tribes had infantile conceptions of perpetuating the story of the great achievements of their race. Each Chieftain had in his retinue a minstrel, who was the historian of passing events and the custodian of the past glories of the clan, who on all suitable occasions chanted or sang in heroic strain of the mighty men of former days and with prophetic ken foretold the unfolding greatness of impending years. Thus was diffused the learning of the age and through these human archives preserved, transmitted and handed down along the passing centuries. It is supposed that the ancient Celt was not skilled in political combinations. The ties that held the clans together were simply those of kindred blood. There was no confederation of binding force to insure unity of action against a common enemy. It is true that each Clan would rally to the support of their kindred when they were oppressed; and it is true that they would wage mighty battles, but as far as organization was concerned, they were weak as against their enemies; and though crafty and developing a high order of military genius they were unable to withstand the organized masses hurled against them in after years.

It is conceded by all authentic history that the Celt was the first white man to enter Europe, but it was so long ago that the most ancient chronicles do not say when. They peopled Great Britain, Belgium, Helvetia, North Italy, France, Germany and Spain, and under their culture the old world put on the regalia of a new life, gorgeous in comparison to the blight of Turanian idolatry with which the land had been enveloped.

But the Celt was closely followed by the Teuton, another branch of the old Aryan race. These were a more powerful people and possessed widely different racial characteristics from the pioneers.

These Teutons, though of the same race and originally of the same language, split up into many hostile tribes, and warred with each other and with everything else in sight. Skirting along the Mediterranean, the Greeks occupied the Hellenes, and the Romans the Italian peninsula; and in the course of ages they built up wonderful civilizations. The coarser and more brutal element of the Teuton were the Germanic tribes, whose most prominent characteristics were greed and gluttony-and these followed fast upon the heels of the Celt, to dispossess him of his cultivated lands and rob him of his material gains. The Celts were scattered over wide stretches of territory, beyond supporting distance and without efficient organization, yet it did not prove an easy proposition to eject him. The Carthaginians warred upon him more than one hundred years before he was forced back by Hannibal. Rome depredated upon his commerce and despoiled his borders, while the Germanic tribes pillaged his homes and impoverished the land. The combined world powers were against him ; his wealth was his peril and his only defense was in his good right arm. Justice cut no figure in the affairs of men and nations, "Might makes right," was the slogan of the day. Beset on every side, he necessarily fought on the defensive. His enemies were always aggressive-bent on conquest, but there were times when he arose in his might and made fearful reprisals upon his oppressors.

Three hundred and ninety years before Christ he scaled the Appenines, wasted Italy and destroyed Rome. And there were other times when his fearful resistance shook political centers of the world.

But, in the course of time we find the great body of the race corralled on the British Islands. There, separated by the natural divisions of the country, they became the nations, or people known as the Britons, Scots, Welchmen and Irishmen. Other populous gens or clans had been swept away by the remorseless wars of the continent, or absorbed, perhaps enslaved, by the victorious hordes of barbarians and their identity lost to history. It is known that Celts of Northern Italy became a component part of the Roman Legions.

The British Islands had been in the possession of the Celts from the earliest known period of time and now became their last refuge; but the SeaHogs were not content that they should be thus isolated and dwell in peace. Honest, simple-minded, frugal and industrious, they soon developed the resources of the country and acquired wealth that tempted the cupidity of the German Buccaneers; and they were assailed in turn by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans. After an heroic resistance the Britons were driven into Wales, where they became merged into that people and ceased to have a separate political existence.

The Scot was confined to Scotland, where he ultimately maintained his independence and was never subdued. Wales resisted England's encroachments for a long period of time without a thought of submission, until at last the King of England made a peaceful proposition to unite the destinies of the two countries by treaty, in which he promised to give Wales a native King who could not speak a word of English; and when the compact was ratified he presented to them his own son, born a few days before in the Welch Castle of Caernarvon, and thenceforth the heir to England's Crown has borne the title of the Prince of Wales. The compact seems to have been liberal, the Welch retaining intact their most cherished rights which have never been seriously infringed upon.

Ireland was overcome by force, but was never pacified.

The antiquity of the Celtic title to the British Islands may be illustrated by a single circumstance well authenticated by impartial history.

At the time of the passing of the Celts into Europe a portion of the race remained behind and located on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, at the point of the joining of the three Continents. It was here that the ancient Phoenicians subsequently dwelt and became masters of the Sea.

The Phoenicians were of Semitic origin, but notwithstanding the marked difference in racial habits and traits, they and the Celts lived side by side on terms of amity and good-will.

It was many centuries after the Teutonic tribes with their neolithic arms had passed into Europe before the secret of the amicable relations existing between these naturally antagonistic people was discovered by the rest of the world. The Celt had sounded the knell of the Stone Age, and with the aid of the Phoenician was developing the metallurgy of the Continents.

Bronze was the first metallic combination discovered and reduced to practical purposes. At that age TIN was an essential amalgum of bronze without which it could not be manipulated. The only tin mines then known in the world were in Cornwall, England, and in Wales-countries in Possession of the Celt-and the location of the mines was known to him and the Phoenician and the secret was safely guarded by them for centuries. The introduction and use of bronze in the form of arms, ornaments, medallions and statuary in the far East is shown by research to have been of very remote antiquity, long before the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, when Solomon sent into Phoenicia for men to complete the great edifice.

Phoenician vessels of superior construction and speed sailed from Tyre and Sidon the length of the Mediterranean, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and thence to the coast of Wales, and returned laden with the precious ore by routes not frequented by the limited coast trade of the Sea; thus preserving the secret of their source of supply and enabling this wonderful people to maintain a monopoly of the art for ages.

It is by this bronze key that we unlock the secret of the ages and prove that our ancestors lived loved, flourished and accumulated wealth on the British Islands before the Greek built Athens or the foundations of Rome were laid.

Christianity was introduced into the British Islands at an early period and was gladly embraced by the simple-minded, honest people.

The gentle teachings of Christ appealed to their sympathetic natures and brought into action all that was best in their lives and aspirations.

It would have been well for mankind had their oppressors comprehended and practiced the lessons taught by the Nazarene. But the German mind never rose to a comprehension of the higher principles of Christian civilization, "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you," was beyond them, and to this day they have not mastered its significance.

The advent of the new era gave a wonderful impulse to learning, literature and scientific progress in Ireland and Scotland, and they became the foremost of all the nations of theearth in literature. science and general progress, and the teachers of the nations in all the mental developments that make men great. Ireland became the educational centre of the world. The surrounding nations sent their brightest sons to her shores to be trained and polished in intellectual lines and fitted for the impending achievements of a progressive age. For two centuries she maintained an intellectual preeminence in all the European lands. Learning became a fad on the Green Isle among the lowly and the poor, and it is told that hucksters on the highways and peddlers on the thoroughfares of the cities would often cry their wares in the most elegant Latin.

But then came the Dark Ages. Barbarians from the Baltic swept over Europe obliterating the progress of centuries. The bright green isle was made a land of desolation. The Church founded by the great Apostles abandoned its holy traditions and joined with dissolute civil powers to crush out the budding seeds of religious liberty, and the age of darkness spread over Ireland. In 1110 the Irish Synod of Rathbreasil sold their religious independence to an Italian Pontiff (Adrian) and within the same century the Pontiff bargained away its civic independence to a drunken English Monarch (Henry II.) in return for a promise of payment of Peter's pence. The wheels of progress were rolled backward ; the field of achievement laid waste and desolated. War, murder, rapine and robbery ensued, and untold woe and misery, such as this fair land never conceived was the miserable lot of our old forbears.