What was the public's response to Swift's A Modest Proposal?

The public response to Swift's pamphlet A Modest Proposal can be approached in at least two different ways. You can look for historical evidence about how the public actually responded, or you can use internal textual evidence to infer a likely response.

The former method would be more reliable if there were a large amount of historical evidence on which to draw. The evidence that there is suggests that the main people to respond to Swift's satire were the aristocrats and landed gentry at whom it was aimed, and they viewed it as a comic work. Lord Bathurst famously wrote to Swift, elaborating on his conceit:

I did immediately propose it to Lady Bathurst, as your advice, particularly for her last boy, which was born the plumpest, finest thing, that could be seen; but she fell in a passion, and bid me send you word, that she would not follow your direction, but that she would breed him up to be a parson, and he should live upon the fat of the land; or a lawyer, and then, instead of being eat himself, he should devour others.

However, you might conclude from the savage sarcasm of Swift's satire that Lord Bathurst's reaction was likely to have been unusual in its good humor.

Another point to consider is whether any of Swift's readers might have taken his proposal seriously. This seems unlikely, given the absurd lengths to which Swift takes his argument. What is clear is that Swift's satire did not lead to huge public outcry or lasting political and social change. Over a century later, Ireland was ravaged by the Great Famine, which, although the immediate cause was a potato blight, was gravely exacerbated by precisely the type of practices and attitudes satirized by Swift.

What is your response to "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift?

“A Modest Proposal” is satirical essay by Jonathan Swift, which he originally published anonymously in 1729. Swift, who also wrote Gulliver’s Travels, was himself Irish. The essay responds through satire to popular discourses lamenting the widespread poverty in Ireland, subjects about which Swift had previously written serious pieces.

The straightforward brutality of the proposal (eat babies to eliminate poverty) no doubt accounts for the staying power of this essay.

For a response essay, there are multiple trajectories that might be effective. One would be to take the essay literally and take apart the supposedly factual bases that the author presents to back up their argument. Spurious statistics are deployed in support of the author's multi-faceted propositions, and the figures themselves and the possible benefits of the programs could be attacked.

Another approach would be to compare the subject and/or approach of Swift’s satire to a contemporary social problem in the United States or elsewhere. You could then match that “problem” by exaggerating actual proposals you have read about. One topic could relate to food, such as suggesting alternative food choices to solve hunger problems, as Swift has done—perhaps the squirrels or pigeons that populate cites? Another approach would deal with poverty more generally; you might propose some exaggerated form of workfare that would require people to do extremely undesirable jobs for any type of compensation, and you could address how effective this would be against poverty.