A modest proposal is Jonathan Swifts way of showing the Irish people how

greedy and immoral they have become. Written in 1729, a time of political,
economic and religious struggles between English and Irish, and within Ireland
itself, it comes to show that Swift (as representative of the poor people) has had
enough of the whole situation. Early eighteenth century Ireland in a nutshell
would be something like this: The country was suffering a terrible famine, had an
existing and working parliament, which had, however, no autonomy, and so was
pretty much ruled by the English, who managed to completely wreck Irish
agriculture and their domestic market. In other words, England was not doing the
greatest job in ruling over Ireland, which made the majority of Irish people angry.
Unfortunately enough for them, though, the people who actually had a say in the
whole situation, were snobby, corrupted rich people, who couldnt care less.