A Modest Proposal

when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, fo

stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of wo

fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of

it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are

e supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment: at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propos

practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes,

scarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can

to this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a crown at most, on the exchange; which cannot

my own thoughts, which I hope will

ild well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed,

fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in

t born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar yea

proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured mos

, that fish being a prolifick dyet, there are more children born in Roman Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because

o gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own f

y flea the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will m

ts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying