Cows and Men 73 



the necessity of most men who have capital in Irish 

 agriculture. They can trust the cow, but they 

 cannot trust the man ; therefore, the man emi- 

 grates, and the cow prospers, increasing her 

 numbers and extending her relative occupation 

 of the soil year by year. Being honest, she makes 

 a satisfactory return for money expended on her, 

 and thus becomes a great instrument of capital to 

 advance depopulation. In other countries, the 

 use of capital has the opposite effect, advancing 

 the lives of men, but only where they can be 

 trusted. The Irish are now the only race in 

 civilisation so unfit to live that they can be cleared 

 out of their own country by their own cows. 



In addition, the Irish cow, unlike the Irish 

 people, is quite remarkably improvable in her own 

 country, and, of course, the more she is improved, 

 the more she can remove the people. The 

 Imperial Parliament has accordingly endowed a 

 Department of State to improve the cow, adding 

 revenue and taxation to the forces of private 

 capital for the removal of the human stock, who 

 remain still quite incapable to see that the costly 

 plans which they accept for their salvation, assist 

 in their steady destruction. It is now about 

 twenty years since the Government began to 

 improve the cow, and with every improvement in 

 her, the tillage area has receded, reducing the 

 numbers of the human occupants on the land, and 

 reducing their fitness to live even more than their 

 numbers. We have it now officially from the 

 Department that the human efficiency falls while 



