The full title of Swifts pamphlet is “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick.” The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to “find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method” for converting the starving …
Summary The author invokes the “melancholly” and all-too-common sight of women and children begging on the streets of Ireland. These mothers, unable to work for their livelihood, “are forced to employ all their Time” panhandling for food. The children, also for want of work, grow up to be thieves, or else emigrate “to fight for …
Summary “I have too long digressed,” says Swift, and so he continues to enumerate the advantages of his proposal. It will reduce the number of “Papists” (Catholics), who form the majority of the poor population and who tend to have large families. He identifies the Catholics as the enemies of the nation–or of its wealthy …
Summary The author begins detailing his proposal, saying that he hopes it “will not be liable to the least Objection.” He offers the information, derived from an American he knows, that a one-year-old child is “a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boiled.” Based on this fact, he proposes that …
Summary The author now anticipates an objection to his proposal–that it will too drastically reduce the national population. He admits this, reminding the reader that such a reduction was in fact one of the goals. The proposal, he emphasizes, is calculated specifically with respect to Ireland and its circumstances, and is not meant to be …
In A Modest Proposal, Swift vents his mounting aggravation at the ineptitude of Irelands politicians, the hypocrisy of the wealthy, the tyranny of the English, and the squalor and degradation in which he sees so many Irish people living. While A Modest Proposal bemoans the bleak situation of an Ireland almost totally subject to Englands …