Jonathan Swift and the Population of Ireland

THE NUMBER OF SOULS in Ireland being usually reckoned one Million and a half," muses the persona of A Modest Proposal, "of these I calculate there may be about Two hundred Thousand Couple whose Wives are Breeders."' The computation itself is not novel. Swift had offered the same estimate several years earlier in the second of the Drapier's Letters (1724): "Now by the largest Computation (even before that grievous Discouragement of Agriculture, which hath so much lessened our Numbers) the Souls in this Kingdom are computed to be One Million and a half; which, allowing Six to a Family, makes Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Families" (X, 16). Swift had also used the figure in a tract he never published, A Letter on Maculla's Project About Halfpence & a New One Proposed (1729): "They have been reckoned at a million and a half, whereof a million at least are beggars, in all circumstances, except that of wandering about for alms" (XII, 99).2 The last passage is especially valuable, for it strongly attests to Swift's belief in the integrity of the tally. Yet for the student of Swift and of Irish economic history, the interest of this calculation lies in its enormous inaccuracy.3 That very inaccuracy, however, permits us to sketch Swift's position in a