Скромное предложение: Сатира Джонатана Свифта о проблеме бедности в Ирландии

1729 satirical essay by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Anglo Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift in 1729. The essay suggests that poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the elite. Swift's use of satirical hyperbole was intended to mock hostile attitudes towards the poor and anti Catholicism among the Protestant Ascendancy as well as the Dublin Castle administration's policies in general. In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight faced satire.

Swift's essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the history of English literature. Much of its shock value derives from the fact that the first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland, so that the reader is unprepared for the surprise of Swift's solution when he states: "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout." Swift was especially attacking projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure all solution. A memorable example of these sorts of schemes "involved the idea of running the poor through a joint stock company". that were in vogue during the early 18th century. Ian McBride argues that the point of A Modest Proposal was to "find a suitably decisive means of dehumanizing the settlers who had failed so comprehensively to meet their social responsibilities." A Modest Proposal also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects. The pamphlet targets reformers who "regard people as commodities". In the piece, Swift adopts the "technique of a political arithmetician" to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispassionate statistics. Critics differ about Swift's intentions in using this faux mathematical philosophy. Edmund Wilson argues that statistically "the logic of the 'Modest proposal' can be compared with defence of crime (arrogated to Marx) in which he argues that crime takes care of the superfluous population".

Author Charles K. Smith argues that Swift's rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish. Swift's specific strategy is twofold, using a "trap" to create sympathy for the Irish and a dislike of the narrator who, in the span of one sentence, "details vividly and with rhetorical emphasis the grinding poverty" but feels emotion solely for members of his own class. Swift's use of gripping details of poverty and his narrator's cool approach towards them create "two opposing points of view" that "alienate the reader, perhaps unconsciously, from a narrator who can view with 'melancholy' detachment a subject that Swift has directed us, rhetorically, to see in a much less detached way." to describe the Irish. Once the children have been commodified, Swift's rhetoric can easily turn "people into animals, then meat, and from meat, logically, into tonnage worth a price per pound". The contrast between the "careful control against the almost inconceivable perversion of his scheme" and "the ridiculousness of the proposal" create a situation in which the reader has "to consider just what perverted values and assumptions would allow such a diligent, thoughtful, and conventional man to propose so perverse a plan". Johnson notes Swift's obvious affinity for Tertullian and the bold stylistic and structural similarities between the works A Modest Proposal and Apology. In structure, Johnson points out the same central theme, that of cannibalism and the eating of babies as well as the same final argument, that "human depravity is such that men will attempt to justify their own cruelty by accusing their victims of being lower than human".

It has also been argued that A Modest Proposal was, at least in part, a response to the 1728 essay The Generous Projector or, A Friendly Proposal to Prevent Murder and Other Enormous Abuses, By Erecting an Hospital for Foundlings and Bastard Children by Swift's rival Daniel Defoe.

Bernard Mandeville's Modest Defence of Publick Stews asked to introduce public and state controlled bordellos. The 1726 paper acknowledges women's interests and—while not being a completely satirical text—has also been discussed as an inspiration for Jonathan Swift's title. Mandeville had by 1705 already become famous for The Fable of the Bees and deliberations on private vices and public benefits.

John Locke commented: "Be it then as Sir Robert says, that Anciently, it was usual for Men to sell and Castrate their Children. Let it be, that they exposed them; Add to it, if you please, for this is still greater Power, that they begat them for their Tables to fat and eat them: If this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same Argument, justifie Adultery, Incest and Sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both Ancient and Modern; Sins, which I suppose, have the Principle Aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of Nature, which willeth the increase of Mankind, and the continuation of the Species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of Families, with the Security of the Marriage Bed, as necessary thereunto". (First Treatise, sec. 59).

Robert Phiddian's article "Have you eaten yet? The Reader in A Modest Proposal" focuses on two aspects of A Modest Proposal: the voice of Swift and the voice of the Proposer. Phiddian stresses that a reader of the pamphlet must learn to distinguish between the satirical voice of Jonathan Swift and the apparent economic projections of the Proposer. He reminds readers that "there is a gap between the narrator's meaning and the text's, and that a moral political argument is being carried out by means of parody". While Swift's proposal is obviously not a serious economic proposal, George Wittkowsky, author of "Swift's Modest Proposal: The Biography of an Early Georgian Pamphlet", argues that to understand the piece fully it is important to understand the economics of Swift's time. Wittowsky argued that an insufficient number of critics have taken the time to focus directly on mercantilism and theories of labour in Georgian era Britain. "If one regards the Modest Proposal simply as a criticism of condition, about all one can say is that conditions were bad and that Swift's irony brilliantly underscored this fact".

At the start of a new industrial age in the 18th century, it was believed that "people are the riches of the nation", and there was a general faith in an economy that paid its workers low wages because high wages meant workers would work less. Furthermore, "in the mercantilist view no child was too young to go into industry". In those times, the "somewhat more humane attitudes of an earlier day had all but disappeared and the laborer had come to be regarded as a commodity". Swift presents the dire state of Ireland and shows that mere population itself, in Ireland's case, did not always mean greater wealth and economy. The uncontrolled maxim fails to take into account that a person who does not produce in an economic or political way makes a country poorer, not richer.

A Modest Proposal is included in many literature courses as an example of early modern western satire. It also serves as an introduction to the concept and use of argumentative language, lending itself to secondary and post secondary essay courses. Outside of the realm of English studies, A Modest Proposal is included in many comparative and global literature and history courses, as well as those of numerous other disciplines in the arts, humanities, and even the social sciences. A Modest Video Game Proposal is the title of an open letter sent by activist/former attorney Jack Thompson on 10 October 2005. The 2012 horror film Butcher Boys, written by the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre scribe Kim Henkel, is said to be an updating of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Henkel imagined the descendants of folks who actually took Swift up on his proposal. The film opens with a quote from J. Swift. The 2023 song "Eat Your Young" written by Irish musician Hozier might be a reference to "A Modest Proposal". It combines themes regarding the anti war and anti income inequality movement, and uses Swift's essay as a framework to compare those modern problems to those same problems during Swift's time. The July 2023 Channel 4 mockumentary Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat, written by British comedy writer Matt Edmonds, updates A Modest Proposal and presents it in a similar format to Wallace's Inside the Factory, with human meat given as a potential solution to the UK's cost of living crisis. The words "a modest proposal" are used in Wallace's summing up at the end of the programme, and Swift is credited.