The title of the piece itself is ironic, for what Swift proposes is anything but modest and simple. At first, it seems like any other business proposal or formal argument one might have seen at the time this paper was written. The author states a problem - namely, children are growing up starving and poor - and then proceeds to offer a solution to it as well as other problems in the process.

For the first half-dozen paragraphs, Swift extrapolates on the problem and gives some facts about the growing number of children that are being raised in desolate homes, with little or no education and with little hope of becoming anything useful to society. Swift gives the

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figure of about 120,000. Whether this number is accurate or not, it lends a sense of credibility to the passage because it sounds official. The author then discounts several other proposed plans, including selling the children as slaves because the amount they bring would not compensate their parents for the cost of raising them. In discarding the other theories, Swift paves the way for his own proposal, which he hopes "will not be liable to the least objection."

Swift also treats the children as animals, similar to the way the rich seem to view the poor as sub-human pieces of flesh and think of them as so many cattle. The author discourses on how plentiful the meat would be and talks about how the money the parents would get from the sale of the children would more than reimburse them for the cost of raising the children to an edible age. Not only would this help ease the financial s

Some common words found in the essay are:
Modest Proposal, modest proposal, cost raising,
Approximate Word count = 651
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)