The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

BRITON LAWS ADOPTED BY ANGLO-SAXONS 181

of Britain was the British Gothic, which is the basis of the modern “‘ English’ language ; and that the Trojan Doric script introduced by Brutus, and cognate with Part-olon’s Pheenician script and archaic Greek and Roman, is the parent of our modern alphabetic writing.

The Laws which Brutus prescribed, and the law-codes of his descendants of the 5thand 4th cents. B.c. (Molmut and Martin), translated by King Alfred for the Anglo-Saxons, were doubtless founded on the famous law-codes of the Sumerians and Hittites, which are admittedly the basis of the Mosaic and Greek and Roman Law. It will surprise most readers, not lawyers, taught by the history books to regard the Early Britons as ‘‘ barbarians,” to find that the great English Law-authority on ‘‘ The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth,” Sir F. Palgrave, shows that the Britons were superior in their civilization, as in their religion, to the Anglo-Saxons who adopted the Briton Law generally for their code in England,

Palgrave writes: ‘‘ The historical order prevailing in this code (of the Britons) shows that it was formed with considerable care, and the customs it comprehends bear the impress of great antiquity... . The character of the British legislation is enhanced by comparison with the laws which were put in practice amongst the other nations of the Middle Ages. The indignant pride of the Britons, who despised their implacable enemies, the AngloSaxons, as a race of rude barbarians, whose touch was impurity, will not be considered as any decisive test of superior civilization. But the Triads, and the laws of Hoel Dda (founded on Molmut’s), excel the Anglo-Saxon and other Teutonic customals in the same manner that the elegies of Llywarch Hén, and the odes of Taliesin soar above the ballads of the Edda. Law had hecome a science amongst the Britons ; and its volumes exhibit the jurisprudence of a rude nation shaped and modelled by thinking men, and which had derived both stability and equity from the labours of its expounders.’’*

The Art introduced by Brutus into Albion was presumably the advanced art of the Trojans and Phoenicians, as sung by Homer and unearthed by Schliemann and others; though

_? Briton code of Molmut revised by Howel the Good (Hywel Dda), King of Cymri, 906-48 A.D. 2 F. Palgrave, Rise and Progress of English Commonwealth, 1. 37O