A Modest Proposal A Satire

A Modest Proposal was published during a time of great duress in the early eighteenth century, when Ireland was facing massive socioeconomic and religious oppression from England while enduring a famine. The proposal's author, Jonathan Swift, came up with a plan for, as the extended title of his proposal says, “Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public”. (Swift, 52) This was a notable problem in Ireland at the time, as many poor children and their parents, affected by the famine, were reduced to begging in the streets. His plan, quickly revealed to be a satire on the situation, involved cannibalizing babies in order to feed the general populace. When

paired with circumstantial information, Swift's proposal is far easier to understand as it draws attention toward the real problem both by rationalizing the absurd and dripping subtle causticity at Ireland's antagonists.
Swift was given unique insight into the conflict through fortuitous circumstances.

A solid education as a member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class (Sparknotes). After becoming a dean of the church, he attempted to retain a permanent position in England but ended up “shuttling back and forth between Ireland and England” (Sparknotes) This exposed him to both ends of the political struggle and allowed him a clear view of the reasons behind Ireland's struggle. Recognizing the unfair actions of England toward Ireland in restricting commerce, he “became vehemently engaged in Irish politics” (Sparknotes), producing his Proposal among other works intended to incite a stronger public desire for political

reform.
Many of the innuendoes and commentary in A Modest Proposal are difficult to comprehend without knowledge of the events occuring during the time it was written. During the late 1720s, England was oppressing Ireland through the use of Penal Laws due to a schism between the largely Protestant English and mostly Catholic Irish. (Sparknotes) English landlords were put in charge of much of Ireland, overcharging their tenants. In addition, the Irish were not allowed to make or sell goods, and agriculture was their only real means of support. The beginning of a famine intensified the pressures on Ireland as poverty and starvation became much more prevalent. With such a desperate situation at hand, drastic measures were necessary. However, many real proposals that Swift had suggested were rejected, and “wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts”(Swift, 58), he concieved A Modest Proposal as a means to shock Ireland into action by exaggerating the desperation of the time.
Swift remarks upon many of England's injustices toward Ireland, reasoning that infant's flesh will be “very proper for landlords, who...have already devoured most of the parents” (Swift, 54) and humorously pointing out that Catholics tended to have larger families to feed by advocating that his plan had the advantage of somehow “lessening the number of papists” (Swift, 54).

The larger portion of his proposal, however, is spent calculating and presenting statistical formulae as proof of his plan's effectiveness. The cold, logical, calculating pretense Swift adopts would have been very much the opposite of his true feelings toward the Irish people and deliberately served to enrage and stir up emotion toward their plight. Listing off numerous methods of efficiently cooking infant's flesh (Swift, 53), estimating how many male and female babies will need to be “reserved for breed”, and suggesting the use of the babies' skin to make clothing for “those who are more thrifty” all serve this end. The only part of Swift's proposal that seems genuine is when he asks the rhetorical question of how the “120,000 children of poor parents annually born,” will be “reared and provided

for?”
The circumstances that prompted Jonathan Swift to create A Modest Proposal provide a backdrop to what would otherwise have been a monstrously unethical proposal; the ravings of a sociopathic lunatic. His proposal may advocate infant caniballism, but when treated as the satire it was meant to be it provides a rich sociopolitical commentary on the injustice of England and Ireland's apathy to do anything about it. Reading A Modest Proposal without proper knowledge of current events now past is not beneficial; out of context it becomes utter nonsense.