74 M Little Farm 



the efficiency of the cow increases, and we all 

 know that the end of inefficiency is extinction. 



It would be unfair and untrue to infer that the 

 Imperial Parliament has made no expenditure on 

 the improvement of the people. It has made a 

 very great expenditure, even more ample than on 

 the cow, and continued now for generations 

 longer, with the opposite of improvement as the 

 admitted result ; but note this deadly difference 

 in method, that whereas the Imperial Parliament 

 keeps the expenditure on the cow under its own 

 control, it entrusts the expenditure on the people 

 to an alien and irresponsible secret society, 

 dependent for its privilege on the people's incapa- 

 city. The expenditure on cows and men alike is 

 voted on the estimates every year, but not one 

 man in either House of Parliament dares to raise 

 this essential question : " How is it that while the 

 expenditure on the cows results in great and 

 progressive improvement, the money voted to 

 improve the people might as well be thrown into 

 the Thames ? " A Parliament that dares not 

 discuss this, whether on the Thames or on the 

 LifTey, is obviously quite incapable of good 

 government in a country like Ireland, and while 

 the criminal waste of ample means remains 

 unmentionable, the human decay must continue 

 in vital interests generally, but probably most of 

 all in agriculture, which accounts for three- 

 fourths of the population. In the whole world, 

 and in the whole of history, I can find no such 

 example as we have in Ireland to-day of ample 



