A Modest Proposal is a satirical work in which Jonathan Swift sharply criticizes the Irish and the English for allowing the widespread Irish poverty that kills so many Irish children. Despite such harsh exploitation of Irish children, no one has proposed “a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth.” Instead, the “prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heel of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers” contributes to the “deplorable state of the kingdom.” Aggravated by people’s lack of interest in the welfare of Irish children, Swift attacks both the English but also Irish. Believing that a remedy is urgent, he proposes a plan that he claims end up helping more than just “the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them.” Armed with statistics and projections, Swift proposes that eating the Irish children is the most feasible solution, for it, he claims, will most positively impact the Irish and the English societies. In essence, Swift satirically claims such a harsh resolution would end both the Irish and the English’s complex social, political, and economic problems.

In presenting his proposal, Swift describes the bleak reality of the Irish. For instance, he estimates that of about “two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders,” only “thirty thousand couple” are those “who are able to maintain their own children.” Of the remaining “hundred seventy thousand breeders,” even after subtracting “another fifty thousand, for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year,” there are “one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born.” He claims that rearing and providing for these poor babies “is utterly impossible by all the methods hereto proposed” because they can “neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture.” Hence, the livelihood of the children is limited: “they very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old.” Furthermore, he dismisses the idea of selling the children as slaves at the age of twelve because a boy or a girl of such an age could fetch only “three pounds and half a crown at most” but the cost of food and clothing they have consumed amounts to at least “four times that value” by the age.

According to Swift, rather than allowing one-hundred-twenty-thousand poor children suffer through hopeless poverty, eating some of them is a far more reasonable solution. In fact, he specifically suggests that a child “at a year old” is “a most delicious and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, based, or boiled.” Rather than eating all of them, however, he proposes saving twenty thousand babies for breeding. He would keep the ratio of males to females at one to four because “one male will be sufficient to serve four females.” Then, “the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune. He claims that a child at a year old could weigh up to “twenty eight pounds” and that a child could “make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.”

According to Swift, eating Irish children will benefit the English. For instance, the Irish give many births to “Popish infants” in March due to “prolific dyet” on fish during summers but eating them will contribute to “lessen the number of Papists.” Also, “a good fat child” will “make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat.” In addition, wealthy landlords will “grow popular among his tenants” by paying more to purchase Irish children. Furthermore, the “nation’s stock will be increased fifty thousand pounds” per year because “a new dish” will be “introduced to the tables of all gentlemen” who “have any refinement in taste.” Then, “the money will circulate” among common people.  Finally, English “who are more thrifty” will buy “the skin” to “make admirable gloves for ladies” and “summer boots for fine gentlemen.”

Furthermore, Swift claims that eating Irish children will also benefit the Irish. For instance, he suggests that the plan will “prevent the voluntary abortions and the horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children.” Also, Irish parents, the “constant breeders”, will experience relief from their financial burdens, for they will “be rid of the charge of maintaining” the children. In addition, eating Irish children will “be a great inducement to marriage” because reproduction will allow people to gain “annual profit instead of expense.” Therefore, husbands will “become as fond of their wives” during “the time of wives’ [their] pregnancy.” Moreover, women could add to the economy and the financial security of the family because “mothers will be able to go back to work” until they produce the next child. Lastly, it will spur a new competition among the Irish to see who could “bring the fattest children to the market.”

Despite the immoral implications of dehumanization and commercialization of babies, Swift calls his proposal a “modest” one, which suggests that people could design harsher proposals. That the Irish could experience worse poverty and oppression lessens the cruelty of the proposal and makes it appear relatively reasonable. For example, others have proposed only ineffective and impermanent solutions, including “taxing British [our] absentees”, not “using manufacture”, “rejecting the materials” that promote import, “curing expensiveness” of women’s arrogance, et cetera. Swift asserts that “such expedients” will only worsen the situation because no law can motivate English or Irish to remedy the Irish poverty. Yet, Swift remains “not so violently bent” upon his ideas” and is willing to accept plans that are “equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual.”

Swift attacks not only the English but also the Irish. For instance, he states that the Irish children are not a “kind of commodity” for exportation, for “flesh being of too tender consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt.” Still, he states that he “could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without” proper preservation of the flesh. These words criticize not only the English for wanting to devour the Irish but also the Irish for the lack of volition to save their own lives. Also, he claims that “such a perpetual scene of misfortunes” occurs because the Irish tolerate “the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor cloaths to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever.”In order to maximize the effect of A Modest Proposal, Swift presents his proposal in a logical format. For instance, he offers statistical data on consumption patterns. Furthermore, he calculates exactly how much mothers will be able to make on babies. While each baby would sell 10 shillings, he has “computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child to be about two shillings per annum, rags included.” In fact, Swift considers all the ramifications—including social, economic, and political—of implementing such a proposal. To top it off, despite Swift’s English aristocratic status, he feigns an Irish identity in writing the proposal and states that he is a bystander who has nothing to gain by implementation of the plan: “I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.”

To conclude, Swift bitterly criticizes both the Irish’s inaction and the English’s indifference that results in the death of the Irish children. He scolds not only the English for oppressing the Irish but also the Irish for subduing themselves to the English oppression. Because he thinks that an urgent solution is needed, he suggests a not so modest proposal, which he satirically claims is a “fair, cheap, and easy method” of transforming Irish children into “sound and useful members” of the country. Offering statistics, Swift attempts to instill fear into the hearts of the Irish, for the use of statistics makes the eating of Irish children appear as though it is a well-thought-out proposal. In fact, he even enumerates other potential positive effects of the plan. He asserts that that the plan would protect the Irish wives from their husbands and from poverty. He also claims that the English will enjoy more delicious cuisines and a more invigorating economy. Swift’s employment of a grave tone in making his satirical claims, however, doesn’t only plants fear in the hearts of the Irish but also those of the English: As the Irish increasingly grow apprehensive upon recognition of the parallel between their reality and the cannibalism in the proposal, the English would fear losing control over the Irish which, in turn, could have gruesome ramifications for the English.