A Modest Proposal

The full title gives the joke away only slowly: A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country. In a calm, reasonable voice, full of figures and economic arguments, the narrator proposes that the babies of the Irish poor be sold at a year old as food for the tables of the rich. He calculates numbers and prices, suggests recipes, and lists the advantages to the nation, before dismissing, as impractical, the real remedies, such as taxing absent landlords and buying Irish goods.

Jonathan Swift published the pamphlet in 1729, after years of famine in Ireland, and its deadpan horror makes it the most famous piece of satire in English: it is only a few pages long, but it shows how cold 'rational' policy can treat human beings as numbers. For Swift's longer satire on human nature, read Gulliver's Travels.

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was born in Dublin after his father's death, studied at Trinity College and worked as secretary to the diplomat Sir William Temple in England. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in 1713 and a fierce defender of the Irish against English policy.

His satires, Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal above all, are among the sharpest in any language. He left most of his fortune to found a hospital for the mentally ill, and his epitaph speaks of the savage indignation that tore at his heart.