The grazier’s employment is to feed great flocks of sheep, or black cattle, or both.  With regard to sheep, as folly is usually accompanied with perverseness, so it is here.  There is something so monstrous to deal in a commodity (further than for our own use) which we are not allowed to export manufactured, nor even unmanufactured, but to one certain country, and only to some few ports in that country;[84] there is, I say, something so sottish, that it wants a name in our language to express it by:  and the good of it is, that the more sheep we have, the fewer human creatures are left to wear the wool, or eat the flesh.  Ajax was mad, when he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies; but we shall never be sober, until we have the same way of thinking.

The other part of the grazier’s business is, what we call black-cattle, producing hides, tallow, and beef for exportation:  all which are good and useful commodities, if rightly managed.  But it seems, the greatest part of the hides are sent out raw, for want of bark to tan them; and that want will daily grow stronger; for I doubt the new project of tanning without it is at an end.  Our beef, I am afraid, still continues scandalous in foreign markets, for the old reasons.  But our tallow, for anything I know, may be good.  However, to bestow the whole kingdom on beef and mutton, and thereby drive out half the people who should eat their share, and force the rest to send sometimes as far as Egypt for bread to eat with it, is a most peculiar and distinguished piece of public economy, of which I have no comprehension.

I know very well that our ancestors the Scythians, and their posterity our kinsmen the Tartars, lived upon the blood, and milk, and raw flesh of their cattle, without one grain of corn; but I confess myself so degenerate, that I am not easy without bread to my victuals.

What amazed me for a week or two, was to see, in this prodigious plenty of cattle, and dearth of human creatures, and want of bread, as well as money to buy it, that all kind of flesh-meat should be monstrously dear, beyond what was ever known in this kingdom.  I thought it a defect in the laws, that there was not some regulation in the price of flesh, as well as bread:  but I imagine myself to have guessed out the reason:  In short, I am apt to think that the whole kingdom is overstocked with cattle, both black and white; and as it is observed, that the poor Irish have a vanity to be rather owners of two lean cows, than one fat, although with double the charge of grazing, and but half the quantity of milk; so I conceive it much more difficult at present to find a fat bullock or wether, than it would be if half of both were fairly knocked on the head:  for I am assured that the district in the several markets called Carrion Row is as reasonable as the poor can desire; only the circumstance of money to purchase it, and of trade, or labour, to purchase that money, are indeed wholly wanting.