Question

Which sentence from "A Modest Proposal" is the best example of satire?

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed.
Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.
I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 pounds.
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

Answer 1

"Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child."

Why: this line uses ironic, economic language to treat human beings (mothers and infants) as commodities—a sharp moral inversion that exposes and criticizes social and economic callousness. That direct use of cold calculation about people is a hallmark of Swiftian satire.