How does in lines 158-170 use verbal irony in the passage a modest proposal

The verbal irony in this passage turns on the narrator's misinterpretation of what "persons of a desponding Spirit" mean when they express "concern" about the large numbers of older, diseased and disabled poor people dying in Ireland. What his friends mean, of course, is that they are morally concerned and distressed over the situation and would like the narrator to come up with a plan to end the suffering of the poor by making their.