Many laws were put in place to ensure that the Protestant religion dominated all of Ireland. Many of the conditions were very harsh, Irish Catholic citizens were not allowed to vote, become lawyers or members of the armed forces." These laws were put in place to disempower Irish Catholics. The Penal Laws have been very successful in eliminating Catholics in Ireland and almost forcing people to convert to the Protestant faith. Although there were many other harsh consequences of being Catholic in Ireland, if you decided to convert to the Protestant faith you would have your power back. For example, if the eldest son of the family converted to Protestantism, he would get back all the land that had been taken from him. There was also a very large gap between rich and poor in Ireland. In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift writes about how young children can benefit those in the upper class. It establishes this predator-prey relationship between the rich and the poor, where the poor is the prey and the rich is the predator. This social divide is very crucial when it came to writing “A Modest Proposal”. Swift used metaphors to compare them to animals, basically putting the poor at the social food bottom.