A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift in his essay “A Modest Proposal” uses satire to attack governmental injustices and political abuse. He addresses Irish poverty and contends that the problem can be solved, and the economy saved by eating Irish babies. In the process, he emphasizes the number and extent of Ireland's social ills and the indifference and neglect with which they have been treated. He talks about the abuses on Irish Catholics by English Protestants who owned farms where the poor Irish men worked and charged high rents that the Irish were not able to pay. This leaves many Irish parents jobless or without decent jobs to support their children, so they spend all their time walking the streets to beg for money. In this case, he attacks the English and demonstrates how the English commonwealth is cruel and corrupt. He satirizes them by saying that:

I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation (Swift 483).

Swift also mentions how the Irish parents bore many children considering the poor economic conditions they faced, and most children grow up to become thieves or emigrants due to parents not being able to support them. He satirizes the Irish for not being able to save themselves from the situation, even after so many solutions have been proposed. He shows that the Irish are incompetent...

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...sibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom" (Swift 489). The very fact that such an immodest proposal can be given and received with such seriousness proves that all people involved have lost even the thinnest shred of human decency and respect.

Finally, the author tries to excuse himself from the situation by saying that “I have no Children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing” (Swift 489). The author, by his statement he means that he is not writing the proposal to his benefit since he will not benefit anything from it.

Works Cited

1) Swift, Jonathan. "A Modest Proposal" The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Vol. D: Pgs 483-489. 2nd Ed. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002.