The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. Adapted from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1729)
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