It is wonderful to observe the bias among our people in favour of things, persons, and wares of all kinds, that come from England. The printer tells his hawkers, that he has got an excellent new song just brought from London. I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and, upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself, with great volubility, upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments. It is not many years since I remember a person, who, by his style and literature, seems to have been the corrector of a hedge-press in some blind alley about Little Britain, proceed gradually to be an author, at least a translator of a lower rate, although somewhat of a larger bulk, than any that now flourishes in Grub Street; and, upon the strength of this foundation, come over here, erect himself up into an orator and politician, and lead a kingdom after him. This, I am told, was the very motive that prevailed on the author of a play, called “Love in a Hollow Tree,” to do us the honour of a visit; presuming, with very good reason, that he was a writer of a superior class. I know another, who, for thirty years past, has been the common standard of stupidity in England, where he was never heard a minute in any assembly, or by any party, with common Christian treatment; yet, upon his arrival here, could put on a face of importance and authority, talk more than six, without either gracefulness, propriety, or meaning, and, at the same time, be admired and followed as the pattern of eloquence and wisdom.
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I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords; who, by immeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers, will, in a very few years, be utterly at an end. It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen labouring, with all their might, for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value (whereby the whole order would, in an age, have been reduced to manifest beggary), at the very instant when they were everywhere canting[41] their own land upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance.... I have heard great divines affirm, that nothing is so likely to call down a universal judgment from Heaven upon a nation as universal oppression; and whether this be not already verified in part, their worships the landlords, are now at full leisure to consider. Whoever travels this country, and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity is professed. I cannot forbear saying one word upon a thing they call a bank, which, I fear, is projecting in this town.[42] I never saw the proposals, nor understood any one particular of their scheme. What I wish for at present, is only a sufficient provision of hemp, and caps and bells, to distribute according to the several degrees of honesty and prudence in some persons. I hear only of a monstrous sum already named; and if others do not soon hear of it too, and hear with a vengeance, then I am a gentleman of less sagacity than myself, and very few beside myself, take me to be. And the jest will be still the better if it be true, as judicious persons have assured me, that one half of this money will be real, and the other half altogether imaginary. The matter will be likewise much mended, if the merchants continue to carry off our gold, and our goldsmiths to melt down our heavy silver.
A MODEST PROPOSAL. 1729.
This came out when the people were starving in hundreds through famine, and the dead were left unburied before their own doors. English civilization was shamed by the sight. His sarcasm was never applied with more deadly seriousness of purpose. There is no strain in the language with which the state of matters is described: the very simplicity and matter-of-fact tone that are assumed, make the description all the more telling. With the calm deliberation of a statistician calculating the food supply of the country, Swift brings forward his suggestion. No work of Swift has been more grievously misunderstood. Some have esteemed it a heartless piece of ridicule, a callous laugh raised out of abject misery. The interpretation is as wrong as the Frenchman who took it as a grave and practical suggestion, and who fancied that Swift in sober earnest proposed that infants in Ireland should be used for food. In truth the ridicule is but a thin disguise. From beginning to end, it is laden with grave and torturing bitterness. Each touch, if calm and ghastly human, is added with the gravity of a surgeon who probes a wound to the quick. There is nothing like it in all literature.
A Modest Proposal
For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public. 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 cabin 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 an honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants; who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for the want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.