Why does A Modest Proposal use the shocking idea of selling Irish children as food?

In his 1729 satiric essay A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift utilizes the shocking suggestion of selling Irish children as food as a tool of irony and hyperbole to deliver a savage critique of England’s legal and economic exploitation of Ireland.12

By adopting the guise of a rational, public-spirited economic treatise, Swift creates a jarring contrast between a calm, practical tone and an unthinkable, monstrous conclusion. This rhetorical strategy serves to highlight the indifference of the English government toward the dire poverty and suffering of the Irish people. Ultimately, the proposal acts as a powerful indictment of the systemic cruelty inherent in the colonial relationship, forcing readers to confront the inhumanity of policies that treated the Irish poor as mere commodities.123