Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

Of the Piaijh Monarchy. 37
tain ; and that they had a fucceflion of fifty-eight,
or at lead fifty-two Kings *.
The Pidilh nation was totally fiibdued by the
Scots in the ninth century, and their name has
been fwallowed up by that of the conquerors with
wham they were incorporated. Did any confide-
rable body of that people exift now, it is more
than probable that ibme of them would lay claim
to the honour of remote antiquity, and boafl of a
very long feries of monarchs, like the Scots, Iritli,
and every other European nation. But though the
Pids have been extind for many ages back, they
have found in Father Inncs, the author of the
Critical Efiay, not only a mod zealous friend,
but as able an advocate to plead their caufe,
as perhaps any one their nation could have pro-
duced.
It is well known that Innes has been at great
pains, though born a Scotfman, to annihilate no
lefs than forty Scottirti Kings. He was fenfible
that many of the abettors of the high antiquities
of Scotland would be difpleafed with the wanton
attempt he made to rob them of their antient
monarchs, to whom they had, at leaft, an old
prefcriptive right. But he found out a miethod of
making ample amends for this injury : inftead of
forty or thirty-nine idea! monarchs, and thefe no
more than petty Kings, had they actually exifted,
he has given his country an indifputable right to
forty powerful fovcreigns of the truly antient
Pidtifh line ; and he has been at no little trouble to
demonftrate, that the Scots of modern times are as
much interefted in thefe Pidifli monarchs, as they
could be in the antient Kings of their own nation.
See Inncs's Crit. EiT. p. 10?
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