ted him through the streets, and the city bells
sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
power.

In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _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_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
somewhat dear, 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. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.

The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
invective agai