A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift

Samuel Westermayer

Professor William Adams

Intro to Humanities C100

01/25/17

A Modest Proposal My initial thoughts about the work was a mixture between humorous and, quite honestly, disgust. It really pushes the bounds on the right or wrong matter and makes us realize that we all have natural human morale’s that won’t ever let us get driven to a certain point in our ethics, no matter how much logical sense it may make or how dire the situation. The aspect of this story that interests me the most is the fact that Jonathan Swift tries to be as convincing in his solution on the subject as best as he can. He drives multiple solid points on how it would help the current state of the economy, yet it even seems to him that as logical of a solution

Catholics in Ireland were socially regulated by the laws introduced in the late 1600s. The laws were implemented and basically designed for Catholic suppression. These laws kept Catholics from voting, holding office, or from even obtaining any sort of education (classroom.com). Catholics were not even allowed to will their land to their eldest son as Protestants did. This made it to where the land had to be divided up between all the male heirs, which effectively reduced their share of land that barely left them with room for profitable crops. Some of the Irish poor lived as tenants on estates of English landlords. There the tenants would work the crop fields and basically all the profit that was made from that labor, went strictly to paying rent. Most of the time the soil was so overworked that it produced poor quality goods, which led to a less than sufficient means to provide and take care of the family. Of all these circumstances, none were worse than having to work in workhouses. The atmosphere and environment in workhouses were so appalling that only the most desperate of the desperate would consider taking on workhouse services. Life in Ireland was incredibly hard, dealing with poverty from an overwhelming population and strict social laws destroyed the average Catholic life, which eighty percent of Ireland’s residents were

Before he was born, his father had unfortunately passed. After his father’s passing his family was still left with a pretty decent living. Swift would be able to move forward in his life and obtain one of the best educations Ireland would have at its time. Swift then moved to England where he spent a lot of time engaging in English politics. Ireland was a country that was heavily controlled by England for nearly half a millennium. Ireland was denied union with England in the early 1700’s, whereas Scotland actually was granted access to England at about the same time of Ireland’s denial. Because of this, Ireland suffered heavily from the trade restrictions that were set from England. Regardless of the harsh shape that Ireland had become from lack of trade, Swift remained patriotic towards his homeland. Upon viewing the state that Ireland was going into because of the restriction set by England, it caused Swift to feel extremely compassionate towards the inequalities and the manipulations Ireland was suffering from its more controlling big brother. Towards the last twenty or so years of Swift’s life, he spent a major portion of his time challenging the English politics. He quickly began releasing several essays and propaganda in response to the decaying state of his homeland, most famous of which is A Modest Proposal (biography.com). I believe Swift’s purpose was to sarcastically reveal Ireland’s problems to England and propose