Here, the narrator’s analysis takes a startling turn, as he offers his thoughts on how best to handle the majority of these 120,000 infants. From this sum, he subtracts 50,000 to account for miscarriages and infants who die within a year. The narrator goes on to make a diligent accounting of the number of infants born annually in Ireland to indigent mothers, concluding that out of the country’s 200,000 wives of reproductive age, 170,000 are unable to care for their children. He therefore resolves to put forward a “fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound useful members of the commonwealth” (52). Of particular concern to the narrator are impoverished infants, for whom he sees no future aside from a life of thievery. Swift’s narrator begins his essay in apparent earnest, bemoaning the abject poverty that afflicts families in Dublin, Ireland, and the surrounding countryside. This guide refers to the Dover Thrift edition first published in 1996.
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