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| Author | Jonathan Swift |
|---|---|
| Genre | Satirical essay |
Publication date | 1729 |
| Text | A Modest Proposal at Wikisource |
A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,[1] commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift in 1729. The essay suggests that poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the elite. Swift's use of satirical hyperbole was intended to mock hostile attitudes towards the poor and anti-Catholicism among the Protestant Ascendancy as well as the Dublin Castle administration's policies in general.[2] In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.
- ^ A Modest Proposal, by Dr. Jonathan Swift. Project Gutenberg. 27 July 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
- ^ Swift notes that "the number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one another collateral advantage, by lessening the number of Papists among us."