In Ireland the pig has long been understood to pay the rent. Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass that Irish rents are not always paid up. That an animal such as the pig, a grunting, groveling wallower in sloughs, should be so popular a favorite among the Irish does not speak too well for them. In England the favorite and most bepraised domestic beast is the dog. The keeping of a pup of some sort is a mark of true English blood. Dogs in Ireland do not appear to be so popular. The fact is, of course, that the pig has been thrust down the Irish throat by greedy, grasping landlordism. Their worships, the factors and agents, perceiving that good man Patrick was hard put to it for the means of subsistence when he had satisfied their rapacious demands, informed him blithely that a pig would make an admirable domestic pet and addendum to the potato-patch, and, unlike a common dog, could, when you have petted him to a certain sleekness, be killed and eaten, or salted and sold. So that the wild Irishman has taken to pig-keeping with a zest which is without parallel among other races; whereas for dogs he has little or no room. The English collier, who on being met in a lane with a couple of fine terriers, was asked by a thrifty land-holder if he, the collier, might not have shown greater wisdom had he spent his money on pigs rather than on terriers, replied: “Perhaps so, but a man would look a damned fool going ratting wi’ two pigs.” One supposes that in Ireland if the people ever do go ratting, they do it with these same porkers.

Quite apart from questions of sport, however, the pig is certainly not the sweetest of quadrupeds, and to have him with you continually in the house, like William had Dora, must be something of a trial, rent or no rent. It is notable, as indicating the difference between the treatment meted out to the English and to the Irish, that when a certain woman of Epping, or some such neighborhood, took to the keeping of pigs on the Irish principle, she was swooped down upon by the authorities who have charge of the public sanitation, and compelled to part with her pet. In Ireland you can maintain familiarly in your kitchen as many pigs as you like, and nobody will interfere with you. Possibly the relationship between the Irishman and his pig might be considered reasonable if one were by any means certain that when the pig has discharged his duties as a household pet and come squalling to the knife, he were really meat for the Irishman and his family. I am afraid, however, that in too many instances the people are so frightfully poor that the bulk and best parts of the family pig’s carcass pass out of Ireland on to the breakfast tables of the bloated English, under the name and guise of Irish provisions. On the whole, one inclines to the view that even as, in the long run, the Irish would be the happier and the better fed without the potato, they might with advantage dispense also with the pig. It sounds like rank heresy, but I commend this suggestion to all thoughtful legislators. The pig requires neither care nor attention in the matter of his bringing up; he is a feeder on refuse and garbage; he would just as soon sleep on your domestic hearth as in the snuggest sty that was ever built, and, generally speaking, he may be considered a very proper beast for association with an indolent man. With the potatoes shooting up merrily forninst your cabin door, and the pig fattening himself gruntingly and without assistance from yourself, you may well recline in honeyed ease and never really trouble to do a day’s work. And it follows that in the course of time you fall irrevocably into the potato-and-pig habit, and acquiesce in the potato-and-pig standard of living, comfort, and culture. You vegetate like the tuber, and you grunt and snore and thrive on nothing, like the porker. It suits the landlords and the legislators and the philosophers, and it fits in entirely with that taint of indolence which always lurks in the Irish blood. The farming of one pig, not to mention the keeping of pigs in cabins, should be prohibited by Act of Parliament. There would naturally be great howls from the Irish people, for nobody is loved with a greater love, or treated with a greater amount of respect in Ireland, than the single pig. But he is a blight and a mistake, and a failure both economically and socially. The Irish of America, it is true, have made large fortunes out of him. There are cities in America that have been built entirely on pig, and the American pork-packing interest appears to keep quite half the country going. But how have these things been accomplished? Certainly not by the breeding and rearing of single pigs in people’s houses. No, the American Irish have gone in for pig-keeping on wholesale and colossal lines. They have turned the gentleman that pays the rent out of the house into fields and pens, they have made a business of the feeding and fattening of him, and they have erected mammoth factories wherein he may be slaughtered and salted down by the thousand. Ireland might with indisputable advantage take a leaf out of the bulky lard-stained book of Chicago. Irish bacon will always command quite as good a price as the best American that was ever exported. The English market for it is practically inexhaustible, but apparently nobody but the Americans has enterprise or courage enough to exploit that market. In America the pigs for the packing trade are understood to be fed on apples and pea-flour, and I have seen it suggested that because they are amply supplied with these staples, the American pig-feeders will always have the advantage of possible competitors. There are neither apples nor pea-flour in Ireland; but there is the potato, and if ever an article of food was designed for a special sort of beast, the potato was designed for the pig. The Irish should endeavor to remember that if the potato have any virtue at all, it was intended for the feeding of pigs, and not of human beings. The English farmer does not, when the dinner hour draws nigh, lead forth his wife and children to his hay-chamber for nutriment, and the Irishman should have just as small a gustatory regard for his store of potatoes. It is pig-feed, my dear Patrick, pig-feed, and not victuals at all. If the English peasantry were to take to a diet of chopped hay and husks to-morrow, the English landlords would not lift a little finger to prevent them, and within a twelvemonth they would adjust matters by putting up rents all round. So long as you, the low wild Irish, choose to be content with the same diet as your household pet, so long may you remain content, and so long will the landlords look to it that you get no other food. I do not believe for a moment that Ireland is going to be regenerated on political, measure-making Parliamentary lines. Her regeneration will have to come out of herself. So much of it as has already been accomplished has come wholly out of herself, and not out of legislation at all. The rest will follow if the Irish people have a mind to deal as straightly with themselves in the future as they have dealt with themselves in the past. And I should say that at all costs the potato-and-pig habit, as it now exists in Ireland, should be broken, and got rid of, and utterly wiped out.