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.