A Modest Proposal is one of the
wittiest and well-written satirical texts ever. In this text, the speaker is arguing
that Ireland's impoverished citizens can better themselves financially by selling their
young children to the rich for food. The speaker persuades the reader by concretely
organizing his argument (ie: firstly, secondly....sixthly), stressing the benefits to
all involved (tavern industry, the poor, the rich, the government), and using favorable
statistics to back his argument (cost of raising a child vs. selling one as food for
profit. For example:
Thirdly, Whereas the maintainance of an hundred
thousand children, from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten
shillings a piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby encreased fifty thousand
pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all
gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money
will circulate among our selves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and
manufacture.
Fourthly, 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's aims are
two-fold. First, he wants to mock government officials' and politicians' rhetorical
discourse. Swift is suggesting that politicians often lose sight of the actual people
involved in the issues they are discussing, so the solutions they put forward are widely
impractical (such as his proposal is). Secondly, Swift is able to put forward his own
actual argument, but having his speaker seemingly refute
it:
Therefore
let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a
pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own
growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote
foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in
our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to
love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of
Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the
Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a
little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching
landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting
a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution
could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and
exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought
to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to
it.
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