ndifference, had afflicted a people almost to extinction. The
restraint of the writer evinced in this tract, is the more
remarkable, when we remember that he was Ireland's foremost
patriot, that he had been her champion for liberty and
independence, and that an indignation filled him at all times,
lacerating his heart, against the cruelty and oppression and
wretchedness of humanity generally. Here, he sits down and writes
as calmly as if composing an ordinary sermon, and proposes, in cold
blood, to alleviate the poverty of the Irish people by the sale of
their children as table food for the rich. He even goes into
calculations as to cost of breeding, and shows how a mother might
earn eight shillings a year on each child, by disposing of its
carcass for ten shillings. Of the million and a half people who
inhabit the country, he assumes that there are 200,000 who beget
children; of these about 30,000 are able to provide for their
offspring, but the balance of 170,000 must inevitably become a
burden. What is to become of them? Many schemes have been proposed
to meet their case, but not one of them has answered. Trade and
agriculture gave them no opportunity, since the trade of the
country was almost at a standstill, and land was now either too
dear to keep or too poor to cultivate. At the time of Swift's
writing Ireland had passed through three frightful years of famine.
Corn had become so dear that riots occurred at the ports where what
corn remained was being exported. The land, as Swift wrote to Pope
(August 11th, 1729) was in every place strewn with beggars. The
poor labourer, had work been found for him, was too weak in body to
undertake it. Thousands had already died of starvation and the
diseases consequent on hunger. Those that managed to exist did so
in filth, and dying every day, as Swift wrote on another occasion,
"and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth and vermin."

No, there was only one way out of the difficulty, and that was to
have these poor people breed children, which they could profitably
dispose of for food. Let them fatten their offspring as best they
could and sell them dead or alive for cooking. The irony of the
proposition may sound appalling to us in this century, but Swift
was not exaggerating the distress of his day. Eve