Jonathan Swift and the Civilised Uses of Stupidity 19 October 1745 — Jonathan Swift died in Dublin. Swift understood that human stupidity rarely needs to raise its voice. Give it a respectable vocabulary, a few figures and perhaps a committee, and it can sound remarkably sensible. In "A Modest Proposal", he needed no villain. Only an impeccably reasonable narrator, who followed economic logic until poor children became a resource. The calculations were calm. Even the children had been accounted for. Almost three centuries later, our methods have improved. We have more precise statistics, more sophisticated models and reports in which human misery fits neatly into a column. We can explain why something must be done, why it cannot be done yet, and why postponement is, under the circumstances, a responsible decision. The people concerned may find the explanation less reassuring than its authors do. Numbers are useful, of course. Particularly when somebody has already decided what they are supposed to prove. Swift did not cure humanity of this habit. In *Gulliver's Travels*, he merely moved it to distant shores. The inhabitants remain strangely familiar. Book recommendation: "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift — considerably less innocent than its reputation suggests.