A Modest Proposal A Satire

For Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish Enlightenment writer during the eighteenth century, the need for relieving Ireland’s devastating poverty, economic turmoil, and terrible living conditions demanded immediate attention. Targeting the Irish population, particularly the rich, Swift proposed an appalling practice of infanticide to improve Ireland’s economic situation. His Modest Proposal suggests that poor Irish families should sell their young children as food for money. The proposal is wholly satirical, but his horrific plan effectively grabs readers’ attention in order to communicate the gravity of Ireland’s social and economic tumults due to British imperialism. In this Juvenalian satire, Swift satirizes British society and rejects its colonialism

over Ireland. Through his proposal, he indirectly evokes pathos, a literary device focused on engaging a reader's emotions, and the rhetorical tactic logos, an Aristotelian literary strategy in which the author uses logic and reason to persuade an audience, to support his proposition through mathematical statistics and by analyzing factual evidence in order to bring attention to the country's growing economic and social impediments.

Swift first arrives at his proposal through pathos and uses dark imagery to further convey his message that Irish people are indeed affected by British imperialism.

He begins by demonstrating the profoundness of Ireland’s poverty by stating “it is a melancholy…[to] see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms(Swift 13)”. This quote shows seeds of his pathos as well as his logos argument, by mentioning the requesting of alms as a social evil, presumably because the practice offends wealthy people who consider themselves importuned. Swift uses imagery associated with woe and gloom when calling to mind the beggars and urchins in Irish doorways, by using the words “melancholy”, ”crowded”, ”rags”, and “importuning”, which ultimately conveys the idea that Swift finds the state that many of the Irish are living in appalling due to Britain colonizing their republic. He then establishes a general presumption, saying “I think it is agreed by all parties...that the prodigious number of children in the arms are a great grievance to the kingdom(Swift 13)”. By saying that the large population of children is a burden to Irish society, he suggests that actions should be taken to diminish this youth population and regain control of English society under the British. He concludes that the best way for children to contribute to a hungry and poor society

would be for society to eat them. Here, Swift may appeal to the readers with pathos with respect to the horrible conditions of many who are in Ireland.
Swift proceeds to use logos to outline exactly how the Irish should carry out his proposal and give evidence as to why selling children as food will better the economy that was first ruined by the British colonialism.

He then lists his proposal’s main benefits and how selling juveniles for meat will ultimately improve society as a whole. In listing his proposal’s “advantages”, all are accompanied by numerical proofs and cost-analytic calculations. He identifies and invalidates potential arguments against his proposal—none of which mention the ethical debauchery of selling babies for a monetary profit. As for the logical considerations to his proposal, and how they appeal to reason, he suggests that this “industry” of selling children for money will improve the problem of how poor people cannot pay their rent by him stating that “the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own...and help to pay their landlord’s rent(Swift 22).” By Swift using basic logic to describe how an industry based on the selling of young children as livestock will therefore help improve all poor people’s living conditions, he is making a case that selling children as livestock will ultimately improve the economy as a whole since poor people are now able to pay their rent and have money to spend. Another reason how Swift uses logos in his argument in favor of the children-livestock industry is that he says that “breeders”, usually poor women who have many kids, can benefit from his

proposal. He believes that they can ultimately improve both in their monetary situation and helping society’s own economic turmoil by just selling the young children they have and gain profit from it. He states,”The constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year(Swift 24)”. Not only does the selling of children benefit the breeders because they can keep on having children and make a profit off of it, but also because those sold children will make Ireland’s economy grow substantially. By him using factual and numerical values in his proposal, he is essentially following the format of a enthymeme in which a reader can conclude that Swift believes the best way for children to contribute to a hungry society and combat British colonization would be to eat them.
Ultimately, Swift tries to rouse an inert nation to combat British imperialism by utilizing two satirical rhetorics, pathos and logos. His horrendous proposal indirectly persuades his audience, mainly affluent aristocrats, to pursue other methods of fighting poverty to ultimately improve Ireland’s economic and social standings which were impaired because of British imperialism. Swift’s first pathetic appeal to his audience deliberately disputes his argument, since his proposal shocks even the most apathetic of readers. In doing so, Swift hopes to influence the British mindset of Ireland’s age and inspire its citizens to move onward into an era of true enlightenment, and not under the control of Britain.