Swift's A Modest Proposal In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift is writing about the problems in Ireland in the late 1600s and early 1700s. When Swift says, “……when they see the streets, the roads and cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling, to beg sustenance for their helpless infants….,” he is explaining what you see when you were in Ireland at that time. The English had taken all of the land, and left almost nothing for the Irish. They we