The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift

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Title: 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 - 1729

Author: Jonathan Swift

Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1080]
Release Date: October 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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.

by Dr. Jonathan Swift

1729

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.

I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of
children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers,
and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of
the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever
could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children
sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of
the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the
children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall
take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of
parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand
our charity in the streets.

As to my ow