People Are The Riches of A Nation
Louis A. Landa presents Swift’s A Modest Proposal as a critique of the popular and unjustified maxim of mercantilism in the 18th century that "people are the riches of a nation". Swift presents the dire state of Ireland and shows that mere population itself, in Ireland’s case, did not always mean greater wealth and economy. The uncontrolled maxim fails to take into account that a person who does not produce in an economic or political way makes a country poorer, not richer. Swift also recognizes the implications of such a fact in making mercantilist philosophy a paradox: the wealth of a country is based on the poverty of the majority of its citizens. Swift however, Landa argues, is not merely criticizing economic maxims but also addressing the fact that England was denying Irish citizens their natural rights and dehumanizing them by viewing them as a mere commodity.
Read more about this topic: A Modest Proposal
Famous quotes containing the words people, riches and/or nation:
“I’m sure I don’t know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn’t like to.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I have been spending my first night in an American “summer hotel,” and I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining callow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!... What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)