How Does Swift Treat The Poor In A Modest Proposal By Johnathon Swift

Between 1691 and 1801, when Ireland was under British rule, the Irish had all their land, farms, livestock, and pretty much all their possessions were taken away from them and were forced to do tenant farming. Tenant farming is where the tenant(s) pay a landlord/farm owner with labor and food to work and live on the land. In England, there was a lot of beggars, the poor, and most of them were women and their children. The children that the women have will more than likely to grow up to be beggars, thieves, and the girls will more than likely to become a prostitute when they grow older. The main cause for this is how the rich treat the poor and they do this because of their selfish attitude just because they do not want to associate with them. A man in 1729 was dissatisfied of how the rich was treating the poor that he wrote an essay to attempt to make the rich realize their mistake. His name is Johnathon Swift and he wrote the essay “A Modest Proposal”. The essay is a caricature of the rich English people in 1729 and how they …show more content…
In the essay, Swift writes, “I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children” (Swift 2). Here, Swift says that the rich, the landlords, should basically eat the children because they have pretty much had eaten their parents. He also says that they could sell the babies for two shillings per annum. What Swift is actual is meaning is that the landlords could stop taking the food and the labor of the Irish and instead let them do whatever they want to do with and then maybe they could gain the respect and trust of the tenants because they aren’t taking all their things. They could trade with them and even let them trade outside of England so that they can bring money to the kingdom. But what if he serious about eating