A response to A Modest Proposal

1.  I believe that the real message in this essay would be that the children in Ireland are mistreated, and the Irish people are already treated like animals.

2.  There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed.

3. I believe that the reader realizes after paragraph 10 that this is an ironic essay. This is because he uses facts and statistics to support his thesis, making it seem more legit.

4. The target of Swift's attack is the english rich, and tenants whom he says can buy the babies, and thus will treat the poor more humanely. He shows that it is not just the rich to blame though, the poor have part of the blame for the mistreatment of children in this way.

5. Swift does propose a legitimate solution: to treat the Irish better, and to give them jobs with more pay.

6. To say that he would be unaffected by his proposal, and to assure that the reader realizes that this is a satirical piece.

7.  He also states that this would create jobs for poor women. I have never had a labor job, and thus have not resisted an employer. There is an emotional connection between anger and resistance though.

8.  Given the job of marketing babies, I would definitely grind them cleanly, so as to make them beyond recognition to the public, so as to make them more appealing. I would also call it something like l'enfant, so as to make it sound classier. I would sell these "baby burgers" in the market, and to the rich, as a gourmet meal.