6 HISTORY OF 



which state the faint wretch expires. In this 

 manner, the man who dies by hunger may be 

 said to be poisoned by the juices of his own 

 body ; and is destroyed less by the want of nou- 

 rishment, than by the vitiated qualities of that 

 which he had already taken. 



However this may be, we have but few in- 

 stances of men dying, except at sea, of absolute 

 hunger ; the decline of those unhappy creatures 

 who are destitute of food, at land, being more 

 slow and unperceived. These, from often being 

 in need, and as often receiving an accidental 

 supply, pass their lives between surfeiting and 

 repining ; and their constitution is impaired by 

 insensible degrees. Man is unfit for a state of 

 precarious expectation. That share of provident 

 precaution which incites him to lay up stores for 

 a distant day, becomes his torment when totally 

 unprovided against an immediate call. The lower 

 race of animals, when satisfied for the instant 

 moment, are perfectly happy: but it is other- 

 wise with man ; his mind anticipates distress, and 

 feels the pangs of want even before it arrests 

 him. Thus the mind being continually harass- 

 ed by the situation, it at length influences the 

 constitution, and unfits it for all its functions. 

 Some cruel disorder, but no way like hunger, 

 seizes the unhappy sufferer ; so that almost all 

 those men who have thus long lived by chance, 

 and whose every day may be considered as an 

 happy escape from famine, are known at last to 

 die, in reality, of a disorder caused by hunger ; 

 but which, in the common language, is often 



