A MODEST PROPOSAL, TO TAKE CARE OF THE IRISH CHILDREN

Today I feel really, really inspired to blog... and besides, Christmas is near, so nearly all of us are thinking about food, especially all the good meat on the Yuletide tables... but this meat is different, though quite similar to pork!

(READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION! NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!)

Ah, the Irish poor. Historically, these miserable people have always spawned like rats (or like rabbits); given that 1) they were very poor, and therefore ignorant of contraception, and 2) they were devoutly Catholic, and thought only of sex for reproduction, never for pleasure.

As a result, poor Irish parents historically had too many mouths to feed - but what if there was a way to put all these unwanted children to a good use - by literally having them for supper?

This is Jonathan Swift's (the creator of Gulliver''s) line of thought in a little essay titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor Irish People from Being a Burden to their Parents or their Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, or A Modest Proposal for short - he foresees that human meat, from Irish Catholic babies and toddlers (tender, juicy, reminiscent of pork in both taste and texture), would become the new fashionable meat to feed the Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite at their feasts, even giving a few recipes and suggestions for preparing the little ones! Just pay attention:"A young healthy child well nursed, is, at one year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassée, or in a ragoût."

There's more!

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the one hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part should be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, cattle, or pigs; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage (born out of wedlock), a circumstance not much regarded by our savages (the poor), therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom (the UK); always advising the mother of the infants to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the forequarter or hindquarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper and salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat expensive, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentifully in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet (Catholics are pescatarian during Lent, between Carnival and Easter), there are more children born in Catholic countries about nine months after Lent, than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom (the UK); and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the number of Papists (Catholics) among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list of "beggars" I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per year, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when the said gentleman has only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work, till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which (babies' skin) artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

But you should take Swift's words with a grain of salt - this is merely Juvenalian (exceedingly caustic) deadpan satire, laced with the same black humour that spices many Monty Python sketches. Nowadays the leftist are always harping upon that the poor should eat the rich - Swift seems to encourage the polar opposite; that the rich should eat the poor - as babies, no less (and use their skin to make accessories)!

Swift's use of satirical hyperbole was intended to mock the hostile attitudes towards the poor, anti-Catholicism among the Protestant Ascendancy, and the Dublin Castle administration's governing policies in general. In essence, Swift wrote the essay primarily to highlight the dehumanising approach towards the Irish poor by both the British government and the wealthy landowners, repeatedly mocking their indifference and exploitative behavior. This satirical tone underlines the absurdity of treating poor people like common commodities and products (like farm animals raised for their meat), and exposes the shortcomings of the high society's morality. 

The themes of social injustice, exploitation of the poor, widespread poverty, and the dehumanisation of the lower social class (proletariat) explored in the essay remain relevant in contemporary discussions about social justice and human rights.