Satire and a modest proposal

We started a modest proposal recently, and it is creepy. It is a satirical essay by Johnathan Swift, where he proposes a solution for the potato famine in Ireland at the time: eating the babies of poor Catholics.

Obviously, this is not meant to be taken seriously, but the subject of satire has always been a bit odd for me, since I can't easily identify it. The first time I read it, I though Swift was being serious.

The thing I feel the need to focus on is that he specifies catholic infants.

To be catholic at this time was almost like a curse; to be Irish even more so. Anti-catholic sentiment started due to the strained relationship between Mary I and Elizabeth I. Mary I preceded Elizabeth to the throne, and was catholic. During this time, Catholicism flourished and protestants were prosecuted.

Then Elizabeth took the throne, and things completely reversed, Protestants who died were put into a book known as Foxe's book of Martyrs and used as a form of anti-Catholic propaganda. Elizabeth began to enact things to discriminate against Catholics, and made worship in the Church of England mandatory.

Those who didn't comply- the Irish, especially- were treated horribly. This treatment led to a lot of Catholics being reliant on potatoes, because that was the only thing they could feasibly grow in large enough quantities to feed their family on the small plots of land they were given.

Then a disease known as blight began to ruin the potato crops, and many Catholics found that they could no long pay their protestant land lords, feed their family or do much else.

This is when many people began to become indenture servants, in hopes of a better life in the colonies that would later become the US.

Indentured servants proved profitable, and many ridiculous crimes began going on the books, to the point an Irish child could be arrested for stepping outside their house (remember, people were losing houses). The parents would be charged for any food the child was given while in jail, even though they were rarely fed, if ever. If the parents couldn't pay, the entire family was shipped off as indentured servants.

Johnathan Swift recommends eating the children of Catholics, to cut down on numbers. He may of been satirizing the treatment of Catholics as well, but its hard to say. He could have had the exact same opinion of them as everyone else at the time seemed to.