A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick is 3,415 words — about 14 min at 250 words per minute, across 1 chapter. Measure your own speed and read it free, here.
How long does it take to read A Modest Proposal?
14 min at 250 words per minute
3,415 words · 1 chapter · counted from the full text, not estimated from a page count. Measure your own speed and this becomes your number.
Read this book
How it opens
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg …
Details
- AuthorJonathan Swift
- SourceProject Gutenberg #1080
- Length3,415 words · 14 min of reading
- Chapters1
- DictionaryIncluded
- CopyrightPublic domain in the United States
- Source checked2026-08-08
Contents
1 chapter
Recovered from the original source text, so you can open the book at any of them.
- 01A Modest Proposal
More from the library
"De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries
A Child's Garden of Verses
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Tale of Two Cities
Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the Seven Against Thebes
Anabasis
A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick is free to read on Liminanotio, a word-at-a-time speed reader that runs in your browser, alongside the rest of the public-domain library.