What were Jonathan Swift’s political views?

Jonathan Swift’s political views were complex. The Anglo-Irish author was a Whig by birth, education, and political principle, but he was also passionately loyal to the Anglican Church, in which he was ordained a priest in 1695. The Whigs advocated for religious tolerance and sought to limit royal authority and increase parliamentary power. Swift came to view with apprehension the party’s growing determination to yield ground to the Nonconformists (Dissenters), the name for English Protestants who did not conform to the doctrines or practices of the Church of England. Yet he also frequently mimicked and mocked the proponents of “free thinking”: intellectual skeptics who questioned Anglican orthodoxy.

Later Swift became associated with the conservative Tories, although he did not renounce his essentially Whiggish convictions regarding the nature of government. He became the Tories’ chief pamphleteer and political writer and, by the end of October 1710, had taken over the Tory journal, The Examiner, which he continued to edit until June 14, 1711. He then began preparing a pamphlet in support of the Tory drive for peace with France.

One of Swift’s most famous works is the essay “A Modest Proposal” (1729), a savage critique of England’s legal and economic exploitation of Ireland. Although he blamed Ireland’s problems chiefly on the blindness of the English government, he also insistently called attention to the things that he believed the Irish themselves might do in order to better their lot.