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THE CAMBRIAN AND CALEDONIAN QUARTERLY MAGAZINE. No. 19.—JULY 1, 1833.—Vol. V. ON THE ALLEGED BARBARITY OF THE CELTS, AND THE IMPUTED INDOLENCE OF THE GAEL. " The Celts were of all savages the most deficient in under¬ standing." They have been represented as "totally unable to raise themselves in the scale of society." " From every argument of ancient authority, and of their manners re¬ corded by successive authors, and existing even to this day, the ancient Celts must have been mere savages;" and if any one has the least doubt of the truth of these assertions, they have only to take the advice of the author* of the quotations, and view the people as they are to be seen in their cottages in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland! The above, it is true, are the expressions of one who was the bitterest and most violent of anti-Celts ; but there are not wanting many disciples, otherwise well informed, who have reiterated the sentiments of this arch-contemner of the Gael, and who continue to speak of them as a peo¬ ple who are only beginning, in consequence of their blood becoming refined by Saxon intermixture, to relish the first stage of advancement from the state of rude and indepen¬ dent savages! The inferiority of this race is said to be constitutional; it is transmitted from their ancestors, and the attempt is vain to endeavour, of themselves, to surmount their natural disadvantages. That the ancient Celtse, in Gaul or Britain, whose vices their descendants in Scotland are so confidently said to inherit, and whose rude and re¬ pulsive manners they adhere to with "a dogged obstinacy, which prevents their civilization," were not so deficient in mental ability, is admitted by Aristotle and Diogenes Lser- * Pinkerton's Enquiry into the History of Scotland. XIX. Y