A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publickSwift, Jonathan
General
A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
Swift, Jonathan
Ireland -- Politics and government -- 18th century -- Humor; Political satire, English; Religious satire, English
Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise
nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and
penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of mothers towards
their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the
poor babes, provided in some sort by the publick, to their annual
profit instead of expence. We should soon see an honest emulation among
the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the
market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of
their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in
calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick
them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition
of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel’d beef: the
propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good
bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too
frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or
magnificence to a well grown, fat yearling child, which roasted whole
will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor’s feast, or any other
publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being
studious of brevity.
Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant
customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry
meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that
Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the
rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper)
the remaining eighty thousand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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