In A Modest Proposal, what is the problem in Dublin, Ireland in the 1700s?

The problem in Ireland is that wealthy British have bought up 90% of the land.  They've instituted high rents that are difficult for Irish farmers to afford, and so the poverty of the Irish is increasing quickly as a result.  Further, the British have even instituted laws that limit the Irish people's right to education, right to hold office, etc.  Those who cannot afford rents become homeless, those who can pay the rent often cannot afford much else (food, clothes, and so on), and many have resorted to begging in the streets.  It's a bleak scene.

Swift interprets this as a metaphorical "devouring" of the Irish - the British seem to get fatter and richer while the Irish get leaner and poorer.  He then dramatizes this figurative "devouring" as a literal one: why not simply encourage the Irish to sell their babies to the English as a food source?  If the English are already so willing to eat up every other resource in the country, to reduce the parents to nothing, then why would they scruple to eat up the children as well?  Moreover, if the Irish are willing to stand by while the English come in and take their land and decrease their rights, why wouldn't they also be willing to hand over their children and earn a tidy profit?  Dripping with irony, Swift skewers both groups (but certainly the English most harshly) for the situation that has developed in Ireland by 1729.