“Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.” [Swift, A Modest Proposal, 415]
In the essay, A Modest Proposal, written by Jonathan Swift, Swift uses satire, diction, and language to show how ridiculous what the British has done to the Irish is. In the passage above the proposer explains that the Irish-Catholic eat fish plentiful during Lent, a known aphrodisiac, saying that the amount of kids they will have will be enormous because of the diet they choose to eat. The proposer is implying that the Irish-Catholic have sex during the entire period of Lent impregnating all available woman. The proposer uses phrases such as “collateral advantage” and “lessening the number of papists” as if it were a good thing to kill off the children born of Irish-Catholic decent. Using words that imply a good connotation, the proposer makes us believe that the proposal will have a good outcome, and not realizing that the proposal is genocide, killing off “the number of papists among us.” The proposal shows how ill-treated the Irish were by Britain and how the Irish need to stand up and take a stand against the people invading their country.