A Modest Proposal: Jonathan Swift's Political Statement About Conditions of Life in 1729

"A Modest Proposal” a Political Statement

Mouth-watering, scrumptious, and delicious are a few words that come to mind when you think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” His satire on the conditions of life in 1729 was to draw its readers to serious discussion on the distressing matters that plagued their society. His extreme and sarcastic response to the treatment of the ever-growing poor population of Irish families, by the rich English landowners, was to bring to light a matter that they had come to accept as normal. Apparently, over time English landowners obtained ownership of Irish lands and would lease these lands back to the Irish farmers at outrageous prices. This made it nearly impossible for farming families to make ends meet and in some cases to the point of near starvation. When many children of poor families grew up, they fled to foreign lands in search of a better life or they turned to a life of crime to make a living. The staggering number of children born to parents that could not support them was shocking and of a surety rarely considered in wealthy homes. Through this essay, he compelled the current government officials of the time to devise rational solutions that would deal with the large population of poor Irish farmers, and fix the conditions in which they lived.

The situation that he was so graphically stressing was the way the English landowners were devouring the parents financially, to which he responded sarcastically, “why not devour the children also?” His proposed solution caused the reader to consider these issues and was to help stop the maltreatment of the common citizen. Jonathan Swift also expressed the fact that people were constantly trying to solve their social and economic woes thr...

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... Jonathan Swift was not trying to plunge the country into cannibalism for profitable gains, but to show the readers that their society had lost the Godly love and care for each other that it was based on. Likewise, it expressed his contempt toward those who continually proposed illogical solutions that would never work. Jonathan Swift, a pamphleteer, which is the equivalent of the modern newspaper columnist today, wrote for political reasons, and shared his views in a way that caused people detest the current state of society. The way in which he presented his view forced them to see the truth of the matter. As one views the course of events that followed the publishing of the essay and the impact that it had, along with its consideration in his literary works as among his most drastic pieces, shows the importance of his political stand against the English hegemony.