Hence, by common consent, the greatest praise is given to those laws of ancient nations which approximate most closely to the law of nature, though when such laws came to be revised by those who had received the law of revelation, they were necessarily amended or altered in conformity therewith.

No government can exist without law; but as hereditary succession preceded the law of hereditary succession, which was at first established by custom, so the _lex non scripta_, or national custom, preceded the _lex scripta_, or statute law.

The intellectual condition of a nation may be well and safely estimated by its laws.

A code of laws that were observed for centuries before the Christian era, and for centuries after the Christian era, and which can bear the most critical tests of forensic acumen in the nineteenth century, evidence that the framers of the code were possessed of no slight degree of mental culture.

Such are the Brehon laws, by which pagan and Christian Erinn was governed for centuries.
The sixth century was a marked period of legal reform.