A Modest Proposal is a satiric essay written by Jonathan Swift in 1729 and published anonymously as a pamphlet that suggests that the Irish might find some release from their perpetual economic troubles by selling their children as a nourishing delicacy to their wealthy English overlords.  It is presented as a straightforward economic treatise that proceeds with well-reasoned deliberation to an unthinkable and absurd conclusion. In doing so it makes a blistering commentary on the merciless legal and economic exploitation of Ireland by the English as well as on rationalistic modern ways of thinking that give short shrift to human values. The work is held to be a masterpiece of satire and a worthy descendant of the great works of the Roman satirist Juvenal.  The term “modest proposal” has to come to symbolize any proposition to address a problem with an efficient but ridiculous cure is used as an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.

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