Subsistence

“ For it is in the essence of slavery that subsistence or little more than subsistence should be guaranteed to the slave. Slavery exists in order that the Free should benefit by its existence, and connotes a condition in which the men subjected to it may demand secure existence, but little more. ”

“ Subsistence! Lord bless me, what a word! fitter for a pauper than a nobleman—subsistence! Then, if you are going to look after your father’s property, I hope you will make the agents do their duty, and send us remittances. ”

“ We have been far more successful in the acquisition of their lands than in imparting to them the principles or inspiring them with the spirit of civilization. But in appropriating to ourselves their hunting grounds we have brought upon ourselves the obligation of providing them with subsistence ”

“ He must behold, unmoved, the tears of his parents; and, casting about for subsistence, in a country where industry affords no resource, love, the main cause of these struggles, must content itself with bare possible lawfulness, and bid adieu to the hope of possession. ”

“ In any true philosophy of the great social changes, especially the emancipation of the servile classes at the end of the Middle Ages in the leading nations of western Europe, we must look upon the new power of production of the means of subsistence from the soil, in proportion to the numbers who were to share it, as the true explanation of those changes. The living men had won new power, new command over the conditions of life. ”

“ Of the nations who dwell in those, or any other of the less cultivated parts of the earth, some entrust their subsistence chiefly to hunting, fishing, or the natural produce of the soil. They have little attention to property, and scarcely any beginnings of subordination or government. Others, having possessed themselves of herds, and depending for their provision on pasture, know what it is to be poor and rich. They know the relations of patron and client, of servant and master, and by the measures of fortune determine their station. ”

“ Human slavery, so often vainly scotched, at last was killed. The means of subsistence no longer doled out by men to women, by employer to employed, by rich to poor, was distributed from a common stock as among children at the father's table. ”

“ In proportion as the necessities of men spur them on to seek out new means of subsistence, so do these new means of subsistence open upon their view. If we cast a retrospective glance upon those steps which society has traced from its infancy to manhood—from a state of barbaric rudeness to a condition of luxury and splendour—we invariably find that all improvements have originated in the wants of the people ”

“ When increased numbers pressed upon the means of subsistence, the surplus removed to a new seat where they established themselves with facility, because the government was perfect in every gens, and in any number of gentes united in a band. ”

“ The first is that of the farmers who produce the subsistence, and who are necessarily employed in this branch of business; the other I shall call free hands; because their occupation being to procure themselves subsistence out of the superfluity of the farmers, and by a labour adapted to the wants of the society, may vary according to these wants, and these again according to the spirit of the times. ”

“ But they would have had less ground for apprehension, had the bulk of the people been easy in their condition. Few will deny that an easy command of subsistence is almost a panacea for discontent among the lower classes. ”

“ As nations purely erratic must depend solely on the chase for subsistence, unless pastoral, which is not the case with our savages, it requires large tracts of country to afford subsistence for a very limited number of souls ”

“ It is, of course, open to discussion what form of society has the greatest power of dealing successfully with the pressure of population on subsistence, and on this question there is much to be said for Socialism; ”

“ Since it has pleased Almighty God so to constitute the world, that the human race should every where increase up to the very limit of subsistence, all countries must witness by far the greater portion of their inhabitants exposed to the dangers of privation, of poverty, and of distress, incapable of being mitigated in any way, except by the prudence, the care, and the general good conduct of the parties themselves ”

“ It is true that so far, owing to the conditions of property and production, the struggle for existence has prevailed, and still prevails, for individual human beings, and that many were unable to obtain the needful means of subsistence. ”

“ The causes of the decreasing means of subsistence are but too obvious; and the checks which keep the population down to the level of these decreasing resources, may be traced with nearly equal 77certainty, and will appear to include almost every species of vice and misery.’ Happy country, secured by the very nature of its government from the terrors of increasing population, and where every species of vice and misery, wisely anticipated, on the principle that the imagination of a thing is worse than the reality, takes away all fear of any greater evils than those they already endure! ”

“ They obtain a precarious subsistence by occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, sometimes by plundering fields or folds, and, too often, by what is, in its effects, far worse—trading with slaves, and seducing them to plunder for their benefit. ”

“ Scarcity of the means of subsistence, which is, of course, most felt when population is increasing, has operated more frequently and powerfully than any other cause in bringing on displacements of the races of man over the globe. ”

“ If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed by fear or tyranny, subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the reduced numbers, and the invariable consequence will be that population which before, perhaps, was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to increase. ”

“ Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash ”

“ No country is, or ever will be, without them: that is to say, without the class which cannot, on the average, do more by its labour than provide for its subsistence, and which has no accumulations of property laid by on any considerable scale. ”

“ As our century has been free from the wars, pestilences and famines which have afflicted other ages, population has increased as it never did before, and, nevertheless, the production of the means of subsistence has far exceeded the increase of men. ”

“ The means of procuring subsistence must always form an important branch of national economy. Writers take a superficial view of savage life, and, seeing how scanty the articles of food are, while the demand is necessarily urgent, have assumed that the efforts to attain them must absorb his whole mind, and scarcely leave room for any other thought. ”

“ Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river-shore, exposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended intervals; and that each peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled, ground, more than he needs to cultivate for immediate subsistence. ”

“ The abundance of unoccupied land, the liberty that exists, a state of things produced by the half-wild canoe-life of the people, and the ease with which a mere subsistence can be obtained with moderate work, tempt even the best-disposed to quit regular labour as soon as they can. ”

“ A nation possessed of a large territory is unavoidably subject to this uncertainty of its means of subsistence, when the commercial part of its population is either equal to, or has increased beyond the surplus produce of its cultivators. ”

“ For population as regulated by, and arising out of the means of subsistence cannot have got the start of it in so prodigious a manner, and as unconnected with the increase of the latter cannot depend upon it. ”

“ Subsistence is the first desire; and, in new countries where forests are to be felled, dwellings erected, public institutions established, roads and bridges built, settlers cannot be expected, in the cultivation of the land, to look much beyond the present moment. And they are entitled to the original fertility of the soil. Europe passed through the process of settlement and exhaustion many centuries ago. ”

“ Still, whatever cause might contribute to the balancing of the population with the means of subsistence, human life could not be sacrificed, without blame being attached somewhere; and blame, in proportion to the greatness of the evil which might result from the measure. ”

“ And if we consider that the same space of ground which afforded an uncertain subsistence to a hundred, or probably fewer, savages, now supports with ease more than a thousand labourers, and, perhaps, a hundred individuals beside, each consuming more commodities than the labour of a whole tribe of Ancient Britons could have produced or purchased, we may at first be led to doubt whether our ancestors enjoyed the same natural advantages as ourselves ”

“ Their docility and obedience have never been equalled, and as one maxim, was, to admit of no person being idle, it is evident that the population must have increased rapidly, and that there must have been an impossibility to employ the whole labour of so many hands on the means of providing subsistence in a country, where the manners were simple, the soil fertile, and the wants few. ”

“ In the general course of human nature, a power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will. ”

“ That agrarian code which is at perpetual war with the laws of God and man, is more especially the offspring of this state of society, the primary object being to secure the possession of the plots of land, which, in the absence of wages, are the sole means of subsistence. ”

“ A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants of life. ”

“ Subsistence, recovery of means of living, rehabilitation, reorganization of those agencies, which are, with intelligent work, the chief means of the wealth of civilized peoples, became the first duty after hostilities ceased. ”

“ We have encroached upon their means of subsistence without furnishing them any proper return; we have shut them up on reservations often notoriously unfit for them, or, if fit, we have not hesitated to drive them off for our profit, without regard to theirs ”

“ All classes of land animals—man included—are 34immediately dependent for subsistence upon the produce of land, and when man emerges from slavery, another element, namely, labour, enters into the conditions of his life and becomes, with land, essential to his existence. ”

“ This new element of prosperity to that part of our agricultural industry which is occupied in producing the first article of human subsistence is of the most cheering character to the feelings of patriotism. Proceeding from a cause which humanity will view with concern, the sufferings of scarcity in distant lands, it yields a consolatory reflection that this scarcity is in no respect attributable to us ”