The excerpt is the following:
<em>As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.</em>
Answer:
He states that sending children to the butcher would be as simple as "roasting pigs."
Explanation:
An understatement is a figure of speech that consists of intentionally representing something less important or smaller than it really is. This is what Swift uses when he suggests that sending children to the butcher would be as simple as "roasting pigs." The author employs this figure of speech to catch the readers' attention and to criticize Irish society and its attitude toward the condition of poor farmers and laborers who can not feed their children due to the high rent they have to pay to their landowners. In order to improve the poor's economic situation, they'd better sell their children off as food to feed the wealthy.
