A Modest Proposal and the Irish Potato Famine

Samar Nattagh

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled…”

Potatoes, brought to Europe from the New World, transformed the diets of peasants all over Europe because they provided more nutrition than corn and grain but for less money. Ireland, in particular, grew dependent on the potato as it allowed their population to increase very quickly. An 1840 report from the Irish poor law commissioner in Limerick described a laborer’s daily meal: “Breakfast: 4 1/2 lbs potatoes, 1 pint skimmed milk. Dinner: The same, and in winter herrings and water instead of milk. Supper: This meal is occasionally omitted in the city of Limerick, particularly during the short days”. But, when the fungus Phytophthora infestans infected the potatoes in 1845, what began became known as the Irish Potato Famine. Since the climate and soil made it difficult to grow grains, more than a million Irish died of starvation because they were no alternate foods available. While some blamed the cultural backwardness of the Irish for the famine, others blamed English racism, religious intolerance, laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, and Parliament’s decision to place the burden of relief on the ineffective Irish poor-law system, which only made the famine worse.

In A Modest Proposal, Swift ridicules the idea that Irish ignorance caused the famine and instead shows how it was actually English ignorance that worsened the famine. The crux of Swift's satire (and the humor) is his supposedly realistic attitude towards solving the problem which is quite obviously not very realistic at all. Using very methodical descriptions and calculations, Swift attacks the British economic system by revealing the absurdities of mercantilism and rationalism when taken to their logical extremes. By reducing everyone to their most basic economic value, bluntly identifying his ideal solution as being “innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual”, he shows how irrational the supposedly rational system is. Swift’s satire, however, is not just a joke. His essay also draws strength from his realism when outlining the problems that affect the poor: “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 the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever”. He concludes by saying that he has “not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work”, mocking the English aristocracy, Parliament, and even, more generally, oppressors everywhere because the British political, economic, and social systems obviously protected certain people’s interests over others’ interests.