In A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift in 1729, in which he describes the poor condition of starving beggars in Ireland, and then proposes to people that poor people should sell their children as food to rich people.
The one of the main questions was who was responsible for putting Ireland in this situation. Swift argued that both the Irish and English governments and the people of Ireland were responsible for their situation. In my opinion, the English landlords who owned land in Ireland and the British government should be blamed for the situation in Ireland. The landlords who owned the land lived mostly in England, and some would only visit their Irish estates once or twice in their lifetimes. The agents who collect rent for the landlords were terrible. They were described as “land sharks”, and they did anything to gain more money from the tenants renting the land. The landlords also encouraged the Irish to live on potatoes, because they wanted the tenants to eat food that they would be able to grow themselves. This led to there being no other food in Ireland when the potato crops failed in 1845 and led to the Great Famine. The British government also knew about the situation in Ireland, and established over 114 commissions and 61 special committees to try and find a solution to the problems that Ireland faced. Many sympathetic Prime Ministers did try to pass laws that would help Ireland, but Parliament voted them down. Being pro-Irish wasn’t a popular thing in England, and several Prime Ministers lost elections due to their support of the Irish.
In the end of the proposal, Swift wrote two actual proposals for how to improve the situation in Ireland, and here is the analysis for how the proposals might have changed Ireland. The first proposal was that Ireland should buy more goods produced at home than important. In 1815, when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the British parliament passed the Corn Laws, which were meant to protect British products. Because of the Corn Laws, Ireland was unable to import much food from other countries when the Great Famine struck. Over a million people died in the Great Famine.
The second proposal was for Ireland to become more independent from England. There had always been anti-English(and later anti-British) sentiments in Ireland due to the difference in religion, as the British were Protestant and treated the predominantly Catholic population of Ireland as second class citizens. In 1800, Ireland lost some of its autonomy, and became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Later, after the Great Famine, there was a great surge in support for Irish home rule. In 1886 and in 1893, British Prime Ministers in support of home rule put a Irish home rule bill before Parliament, but neither passed. In World War I, the Germans, who were at war with the British, supported the Easter Uprising. When the British government militarily suppressed the uprising, anti-British sentiments in Ireland reached a new height.In 1919, the Irish War of Independence broke out, and lasted until 1921, when the British and Irish reached an agreement for home rule in Ireland as the Irish Free State.
