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Essay Archive - Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
. . .first ask the parents of these mortals whether they would not at this
day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old in
the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of
misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords,
the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common
sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the
inclemencies of weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the
like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever(Swift 388).
The Ireland of 1720....
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