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A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal was written by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who is well-known as the author of the satirical political fantasy, Gulliver's Travels. Swift published the Modest Proposal in 1729 as a pamphlet (a kind of essay in an unbound booklet). At this time, and for many years afterward, Ireland (not an independent country) was far poorer than England. Most people born there were Roman Catholics and employed as agricultural labourers or tenant farmers. The landlords (landowners) were paid from the produce of the land, at rates which the workers could rarely afford. This ruling class were usually Protestants. Many of them were not born in Ireland, nor did they live there permanently. If the labourers lost their work, there would always be other poor people to take it up. There was no social security system and starvation was as common as in the Third World today. Swift knows, in writing the Proposal, that in living memory, Irish people had been driven to cannibalism.

The Modest Proposal begins by describing the very real poverty of people in Ireland. Swift presents this quite sympathetically but sets out facts and details, showing that there is a “surplus” of children who cannot be fed. He considers the possibility of selling the children into slavery, but objects to this - not because it is cruel or wrong, but because no-one will buy children below twelve years of age. This means that there is a long period in which the children cannot be fed, because their parents are too poor, but are too small and weak to be sold into work. Next he digresses to make the shocking claim that, according to an American whom he knows, a healthy child at one year old is:
“a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked or Boyled”

From this beginning, Swift proceeds to develop his scheme by breeding children for food. For example, he states that landlords will be popular with tenants because they will be able to pay them more, to buy the...