in the subtitle, the speaker puts forward the claim that children are a burden on the country, and then ascertains that others undoubtedly agree with their position, thus casting is as fact rather than opinion. For example, the third paragraph begins “I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children…is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom….” Their pompous attitude and pride are indicated at the end of that paragraph, stating as part of that supposed agreement, that “whoever”—that is, the speaker—could solve the problem, “would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.”

They go on to say that their solution will do even more than just solve the problem of the children. They brag about their intellectual merits by saying that they have thought about the topic “for many years” and found serious errors in the works of others: their “schemes… [are] grossly mistaken….” Once the speaker has established that their work is based on statistics, they continue to use numbers to support the questionable assertions that they claim as fact.

Swift modeled A Modest Proposal (1729) on the many such proposals, written by writers often called projectors, designed to reform political, social, and economic problems in Great Britain, but most especially in Ireland, at that time probably the most economically exploited part of the country.  Swift, Irish himself, had a long history attempting to convince the British that the economic exploitation of Ireland was against their interests and a gross violation of human rights.  A Modest Proposal is still considered the best example of irony in English literature.  Unfortunately, as good as it is, the irony was lost on the English.

For such a proposal to be credible, even though the proposal is horrific, inhumane, outlandish and any other negative adjective one can use, the proposer must appear to be realistic, unsentimental, economically sound, and eminently logical.  He must, in essence, want to solve a problem in the most reasonable and beneficial manner possible.  Swift goes to great lengths to establish the objectivity and good will of the proposer:

 It is a melancholly Object to those, who walk through this great Town, or travel in the Country, when they see the Streets, the Roads, and Cabbin-Doors, crowded with Beggars of the female Sex, followed by three, four, or six Children, all in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms.

Swift's proposer-persona is a man who is horrified by the sad sight of destitute mothers and children, and the reader is lulled into the belief that what follows will be a considered, humane solution to this sad problem.  In the first few lines, then, Swift has created a person who is sympathetic and reasonable and, more important, may have a solution to these tragic scenes.

The proposer's logic and economic expertise are further established in the next few lines:

It is true a Child, just dropt from it's Dam, may be supported by her Milk, for a Solar year with little other Nourishment, at most not above the Value of two Shillings, which the Mother may certainly get, or the Value in Scraps, by her lawful Occupation of begging, and it is exactly at one year Old that I propose to provide for them.

Among other things, this proposer can be characterized as a thorough and careful economist who has performed objective, not sentimental, analyses that lead him to create a model for solving this economic and human tragedy. At this point, even a careful reader has no clue where this proposal is heading, but reader senses that this proposer is intelligent and reasonable.

Not only has the proposer done his economic homework, but he has covered the religious and political implications of the problem:

it would greatly lessen the Number of Papists, with whom we are Yearly over-run, being the principal Breeders of the Nation, as well as our most dangerous Enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the Kingdom to the Pretender.

If the economic and humane aspects of the proposal fail to convince the reader, this proposer understands that his readers can be persuaded on the basis of the plan's ability to get rid of Britain's enemies.  Because England is a Protestant country that is faced with an Ireland overrun with Catholics who may try to assist a Catholic king (in exile in France) to take over England, the proposal has the important additional benefit of ridding Great Britain of Catholics, who are the natural political enemies of the English.

In sum, then, the proposer is not only characterized by his humanity, objectivity, and economic expertise but also by his patriotism and awareness of the political dangers that threaten the continuation of English life.  If one ignores the fact that children are being eaten, this proposal has a lot of merits.

Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is a satirical essay which attacks contemporary attitudes in eighteenth-century England towards the poor and, specifically, towards the Irish. When the book was written, in the 1720s, Ireland (which had been under the control of the English for almost five hundred years) was suffering significant and increasing levels of abject poverty because of strict trade restrictions imposed by England.

The tone that Swift adopts is, for the most part, mock-serious and deadpan. For example, addressing the issue of poverty in Ireland, he says that he has "been assured... that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food." Ostensibly, the narrator here is suggesting that the poor eat their own children to ameliorate their hunger. The suggestion is of course preposterous and inhumane, and the implication is that the dismissive attitudes of the English towards the poor at this time were equally preposterous and equally inhumane.

At times, however, Swift's tone becomes more earnest and more scathing. For example, Swift writes that "it is very well known that [the poor] are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin." The tone here is at once hyperbolic and matter-of-fact, scathing and exasperated. Writing about Ireland in a more general sense, Swift proposes that the Irish learn "to love [their] country" and cease their "animosities and factions." In instances like these, Swift seems to abandon, momentarily, the mock-serious, satirical tone that he adopts for much of the book, and instead adopts an earnest, heartfelt, pleading tone. This is, of course, understandable when we remember that Swift was himself Irish and would therefore have had a personal interest in and a pronounced sympathy for the suffering and poverty in Ireland.

This is certainly one of the excellent aspects of this essay. It is important to think about how the tone that Swift creates fits into his satire as a whole. Swift very cleverly creates a tone that increases the impact of his barbaric and shocking "modest proposal," which heightens the satire and irony of the piece. Note how, before proposing his solution to the Irish famine, the speaker makes every effort to present himself as a caring, sensitive and earnest individual who sincerely wishes to find a solution to this problem. The repeated reference to statistics likewise shows how credible the speaker is, as he has obviously done his research well. Thus the suggestion of rearing Irish babies as a food source is all the more shocking.

However, what is essential to realise about this excellent essay, is the way in which there are two separate tones that are operating side by side. Although the "surface" tone is reasonable and earnest, the deeper tone is one of bitterness and sarcasm. The sheer preposterous nature of the "modest proposal" is evidence of this deeper tone. Swift is very angry about the British government's inability to do anything about the famine, and this anger and resentment seethes beneath the respectable surface of this essay.

In A Modest Proposal, Swift feels intense anger at the British over their treatment of the Irish poor. British landlords, often absentee, owned much of the land in Ireland and, as Swift's essay points out, exploited the Irish mercilessly both to enrich themselves and to get themselves out of unnecessary debt brought on by indulging in luxuries and vices.

In fact, the clueless narrator suggests killing and selling Irish babies as gourmet food to the English because other, more humane alternatives have been rejected. The narrator lists some of them in his essay: a small tax ("five shillings a pound") on absentee landlords to help the poor, buying locally-made products to help local industry prosper, curing "the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming [gambling] in our women," and cultivating such virtues as frugality and moderate wants in the rich. In other words, Swift understands that the English squeeze the Irish mercilessly because they themselves have squandered vast amounts of money for no good reason. They have gambled away and frivolously overspent themselves on nonsense to the point of being so desperate for money that they prey on the destitute, who can't fight back.

Swift's anger at the hard-heartedness of the English when faced with the misery of the Irish poor comes out in quotes such as the following:

I grant this food [the babies] will be somewhat dear [expensive] 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.