tirized time and again, but no
similar condition of things has existed with a Swift living at the time,
to observe and comment on them. The tract itself must be read with a
knowledge of the Irish conditions then prevailing; its temper is so calm
and restrained that a reader unacquainted with the conditions might be
misled and think that the author of "Gulliver's Travels" was indulging
himself in one of his grim jokes. That it was not a joke its readers at
the time well knew, and many of them also knew how great was the
indignation which raged in Swift's heart to stir him to so unprecedented
an expression of contempt. He had, as he himself said, raged and stormed
only to find himself stupefied. In the "Modest Proposal" he changed his
tune and

... with raillery to nettle,
Set your thoughts upon their mettle.

Swift has been censured for the cold-blooded cynicism of this piece of
writing, but these censurers have entirely misunderstood both his motive
and his meaning. We wonder how any one could take seriously a proposal
for breeding children for food purposes, and our wonder grows in
reflecting on an inability to see through the thin veil of satire which
barely hid an impeachment of a ruling nation by the mere statement of
the proposal itself. That a Frenchman should so misunderstand it (as a
Frenchman did) may not surprise us, but that any Englishman should so
take it argues an utter absence of humour and a total ignorance of Irish
conditions at the time the tract was written. But history has justified
Swift, and it is to his writings, rather than to the many works written
by more commonplace observers, that we now turn for the true story of
Ireland's wrongs, and the real sources of her continued attitude of
hostility towards England's government of her.

It has been well noted by one of Swift's biographers, that for a
thousand readers which the "Modest Proposal" has found, there is perhaps
only one who is acquainted with Swift's "Answer to the Craftsman." It
may be that the title is misleading or uninviting; but there is no
question that this tract may well stand by the side of the "Modest
Proposal," both for force of argument and pungency of satire. In its way
and within the limits of its more restricted argument it is one of the
ablest pieces of writing Swift has given us on behalf of Irish liberty.

The title of Irish patriot which Swift obtained was not sought for by
him. It was given him mainly for the