A Modest Proposal The Proposer (Narrator) Quotes

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for the landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. (12)

The narrator implies that the landlords already have ownership over the children, by merit of their wealth.

He said that, many gentlemen of this kingdom having of late destroyed their deer, he concluded that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens (17)

Deer were a precious commodity in 18th-century Ireland. If you were eating venison for dinner, you were probably doing pretty well for yourself.

[…] and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his Imperial Majesty's Prime Minister of State and other great Mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet (18)

Swift lifted this gory little story from George Psalmanazar, a French explorer whose accounts were later exposed as lies.