76 My Little Farm 



capital can make a profit by buying out the 

 peasant to replace him by the efficient cow. It is 

 only by organising crime against capital that the 

 human clearance is delayed, but it has already 

 begun, even on the peasant plot. Every little 

 town has already its extending ring of grass, 

 secured chiefly by the capital of the rich shop- 

 keeper removing the incapable peasant ; and every 

 prospect of agrarian peace widens the area of the 

 depopulation. Ask the wealthy shopkeeper why 

 he never tills his ring of grass, and he will tell you 

 (in confidence) that it is because he cannot trust 

 his fellow countrymen. Pasture cannot well be 

 stolen, the cow can be trusted, and the price of 

 beef goes up, while the peasant remains unimprov- 

 able, with his very mind and conscience appro- 

 priated as his enemy's assets. Who would risk 

 his money on the unimprovable ? So long as the 

 money provided to educate the Irish peasant is 

 administered to degrade him, as it certainly is 

 now, other expenditure on him must be waste ; 

 and that is why the Department finds the human 

 efficiency falling while the expenditure on the 

 brute economy remains reproductive. The cattle 

 driving is simply because the cow can make more 

 per acre out of the soil than the man, who, in his 

 removal from the soil, fights a rear guard action 

 by way of organised outrage ; and, no matter how 

 expensively governments may scheme, there is not 

 the least hope for the man against the cow until 

 he is permitted to claim personal property in mind 

 and conscience, an elementary liberty against 



