A Modest Proposal LRJ

Sarita Beekie
Ms. Peifer
10 IB - Hour 5
25 March 2009

A Modest Proposal LRJ

In Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, blatantly states that Ireland's poverty is due to a "prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently their fathers, [which] is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance" (Swift 1).
In order to solve this problem, he humbly suggests "that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, [only] twenty thousand be reserved for breed" (Swift 2) and that the rest of the children be eaten, because "a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food" (Swift 2).
To support the merit behind his proposal, Swift throws out statistics such as, "a child born just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds" (Swift 2) and "a beggar's child to be about two shillings per annum" (Swift 3). Other arguments that Swift uses deal more with morality, such as, "likewise another great advantage in my scheme, [is] that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children" (Swift 1) (which perfectly adds to the satirical irony of Swift's proposal, seeing how Swift's suggested infanticide/cannibalism and abortion both result in killing children).
In the last paragraphs, Swift is asserting that his proposal is only his "opinion", and that there are other ways to solve the crisis previously stated in the proposal. In these last paragraphs, (if it wasn't apparent before) Swift makes it clear that he doesn't feel that it is at all necessary (or even right) to kill babies in order to solve Ireland's economic crisis concerning the Irish common folk. He backs this up by saying, "I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work...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 6).
Despite his fervent insistence on eating babies as a source of nourishment, Swift actually uses his Modest Proposal to address a completely different aspect. Swift uses the Modest Proposal as a way of attacking the Engish landlords that overtax the Irish common folk, leaving them in utter poverty. This is very apparent when Swift states, "I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children" (Swift 3). Other attacks on the richer Engish landlords include, Swift states, "Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen" (Swift 3), and "The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle already being seized, and money a thing unknown" (Swift 4), and lastly, "whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided...the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever" (Swift 6).