Swift's "Real" Proposals
[After the asterisks in your text, there is a passage that was omitted in your version of "A Modest Proposal." In this passage, Swift articulates what he thinks would be some real policies that would help the starving people of Ireland. He begins by saying, "Let no man talk to me of other expedients," and then he launches forth with a list of things the British Government should do.]
Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be
constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry
meetings, particularly weddings and christenings: I compute that Dublin would
take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses, and the rest of the kingdom
(where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty
thousand.
I can think of no one that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless
it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in
the kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal design in
offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculated my
remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever
was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon earth.
Therefore let no
man talk to me of other expedients:
Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither
clothes, nor household furniture, except what is our own growth and manufacture:
Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury:
Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women:
Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and temperance: Of learning to
love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of
Tompinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor act any long like the
Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of
being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of
teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants.
Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, into our shopkeepers, who, if
a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately
unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure and goodness, nor
could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the likes expedients,
till he hath at least a glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and
sincere attempt to put them in practice. But as to myself, having been wearied
out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length
utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which as
it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little
trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in
disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the
flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt,
although perhaps I could name a country that would be glad to eat up our whole
nation without it.
[At this point your text picks up with "After all I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion..."]