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But all this has been changed. A fearful famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution. The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of subsistence.
The great bug-bear ever present in the mind of an Englishman, is the dread of not being thought sufficiently "respectable." Professional men and tradesmen depend for their subsistence upon appearances. To be flashy is as bad as to be shabby; the great object is to appear substantial. If you are rich, you have less temptation to be dishonest, and may consequently be trusted.
He is thirty-three years old, married, with an increasing family, and no means of subsistence beyond periodical journalism and odd jobs of clerical duty. "Two or three random sermons," he says, "I have discharged, and thought I perceived that the greater part of the congregation thought me mad. The clerk was as pale as death in helping me off with my gown, for fear I should bite him."
After this, he obtained a precarious subsistence by heading a band of robbers; from which occupation he passed, by an easy transition in such troubled times, into the employment of the Afghan Governor of Khorasan, by whom he was at first raised to rank and command, as a reward for his valor in actions with the Usbegs, and afterward degraded and punished with the bastinado on account of his insolent and turbulent conduct.
During the summer when other means of subsistence were present, all appeals for food were refused. This custom of granting rations was formally incorporated in the law of June 30, 1834, with the only restriction that they were to be given only if "they can be spared from the army provisions without injury to the service".
The destruction of the monasteries left the poor and defenseless without their accustomed sources of relief; while steadily rising prices, due partly to the increased supply of silver from the Spanish-American mines, were not infrequently disastrous to those who were already living close to the margin of subsistence.
He had, in his affluence, heard of several authors, who, without any pretensions to genius or human literature, earned a very genteel subsistence by undertaking work for booksellers, in which reputation was not at all concerned.
Shortly after the beginning of July we freed our prisoners at fair Ransom in Gold-dust; but the Village where we landed them was so poor in common Necessaries, that we were obliged to give them some corned beef and biscuit for their subsistence until they could get up the Country, where there was a Town.
Running through the tables of every industry, the average is about the same, the wage for women, even when doing the same work, hardly more than a third that for men, and the amount for either at bare subsistence point.
But, just as they reached a proper age for their union, misfortunes had fallen heavily on both, and made it necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare subsistence.
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