SOURCE: Hunting, Robert. “Cathedral Dean and Patriot.” In Jonathan Swift, pp. 79-93. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1989.

In the following essay, Hunting views Swift's A Modest Proposal not only as a warning to the Irish, but also to the British against taking advantage of them.

A Modest Proposal is the most brilliant of a long series of Irish tracts by Swift. Ireland first learned about the Proposal in an advertisement in the Dublin Intelligence for 8 November 1729: “The late apparent spirit of patriotism, or love to our country, so abounding of late, has produced a new scheme, said in public to be written by D—— S——, wherein the author … ingenuously advises that one fourth part of the infants under two years old, be forthwith fattened, brought to market and sold for food, reasoning that they will be dainty bits for landlords, who as they have already devoured most of the parents...