Jonathan Swift Research Paper

Kurc 1
If you were given a chance to live in England or Ireland in the seventeenth century, would you take it? Chances are you would either be one the fortunate ones and be very rich, with profligacy and luxuries that you can indulge in, or you would be very poor, spending your day begging people for money or food, so you could somehow survive for another day, never knowing if the next day you will be lucky because everyday people of your social rank die of starvation and disease. One would think that this is not fair, but in the seventeenth century a voice was needed to raise support to help solve this serious social and political problem.
Jonathan Swift was born into a poor family on November 30, 1667. He attended Trinity College to get
Jonathan thought of himself as not an extremist in being in favor of any political party. He seemed to have a lot of anger toward where he saw human oppression, injustice, intolerance or violence. Some of the social problems at the time included fierce religious antagonisms, severe poverty for those who tried to find a way to exist and survive at the "lowest level of the social scale," and "profligacy and extravagance" among those who were rich and "on top."[footnoteRef:8] Other problems included alcoholism, gambling, and violence" which were the foundations of corruption happening in society. "Political pamphleteering was a fashionable pastime in Swift's day, which saw vast numbers of tracts and essays advancing political opinions and proposing remedies for Ireland's economic and social ills."[footnoteRef:9]"A Modest Proposal" was published in 1729. [footnoteRef:10] [7: Prentice Hall Literature (New York: Penguin, 2005) 618] [8: George Levine, A Modest Proposal and Other Satires (New York: Prometheus, 1995) 9] [9: Sparknotes] [10: Ernest Turson, Swift(New Jersey: Prentice Hall)
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
Swift writes about the advantages that his proposal could serve for the country's economy and society. The first advantage is that it would ". . . greatly lessen the number of Papists. . . ." as well as ". . . our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate." Swift's second advantage is that the ". . . poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own" and will "help to pay their landlord's rent. . . ." [footnoteRef:12]