Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the common people, they, in the event of an unkindly season, have somethin^' upon which they can still fall back, so that what would otherwise be famine, is at worst changed into privation. “ In those countries,” it has been judiciously observed by the late David Ricardo, “ where the labouring classes have the fewest wants, and are contented with the chea]iest food, the people are ex- posed to the greatest vicissitudes and miseries. They have no place of refuge from calamity; they cannot seek refuge in a lower station ; they are already so low that they can fall no lower. On any deficiency of the chief article of their subsistence, there are few substitutes of which they can avail themselves, and dearth to them is attended with almost all the evils of famine.” If a scarcity of food should be experienced in this country, the great bulk of the common people, nay even the very poorest amongst them, have, generally S])eak- ing, still some articles, that in foreign countries would be considered luxuries, which thej' can forego, some pro- perty which they can sacrifice, in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger. In India, on the contrary, and in most of the countries where rice forms the principal article of human fond, the labourins: classes are ))00r in the extremest sense of the word. Having few artificial wants, they ai'c without those habitual incentives to exertion which actuate so ])owcrfully and so beneficially people of the same rank in countries like our own. If they can acquire a meal for themselves and their families they have little thought about higher comforts ; the price of labour in such countries is, in fact, equal to very little beyond the ])urchase of the lowest descrii)tion of food : the Indian labourer is contented with the rudest hut as a place of shelter—he is without what we arc accustomed to consider the most indispensable articles of household furniture, and his clothing consists of a few yards of the commonest cotton cloth. When the price of his ordinary food advances beyond the usual rate he is sunk into immediate wretchedness; he has no fund whereon he can draw for assistance, and the wages of his labour are so I’ar from advancing under these circumstances that
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