He had to please and content an army a thousand miles from home, without supplies, except such as were precarious,living on the plainest food, and doomed to infinite labors and drudgeries, besides attacking camps and assaulting fortresses, and fighting pitched battles.

I was even given to understand, a little time ago, by a very great lady, that my position was quite precarious.

Even the idea given us of the German manners by the Roman historian may convince us, that that bold people would never have been content with so precarious a subsistence, or have fought to procure establishments which were only to continue during the good pleasure of their sovereign.

The delivery of the former, at the weekly, monthly, or annual terms of payment, still recalls the idea of a voluntary gratuity from the prince, and reminds the soldier of the precarious tenure by which he holds his commission.

It seemed equitable that one who had cultivated and sowed a field should reap the harvest: hence fiefs, which were at first entirely precarious, were soon made annual.

During this precarious state of the supreme power, a difference would immediately be experienced between those portions of territory which were subjected to the feudal tenures, and those which were possessed by an allodial or free title.

These conditions were too precarious to satisfy the Norman barons, who enjoyed more independent possessions and jurisdictions in their own country; and William was obliged, in the new distribution of land, to copy the tenures which were now become universal on the continent.

The sum was, during some reigns, precarious and uncertain; it was sometimes levied without allowing the vassal the liberty of personal service

We have not here enumerated all the species of felonies, or of crimes by which forfeiture was incurred: we have said enough to prove, that the possession of feudal property was anciently somewhat precarious, and that the primary idea was never lost, of its being a kind of FEE or BENEFICE.

And as the improvements of agriculture were also much checked by the immense possessions of the nobility, by the disorders of the times, and by the precarious state of feudal property, it appears that industry of no kind could then have place in the kingdom

Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had been granted him by Parliament.

The Earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight, in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the solid honours of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity.

But though that House derived its existence from so precarious and even so invidious an origin as Leicester's usurpation, it soon proved, when summoned by the legal princes, one of the most useful, and, in process of time, one of the most powerful members of the national constitution; and gradually rescued the kingdom from aristocratical as well as from regal tyranny.

It is easy to imagine how precarious their state must have been under an indigent prince, somewhat restrained in his tyranny over his native subjects, but who possessed an unlimited authority over the Jews, the sole proprietors of money in the kingdom, and hated, on account of their riches, their religion, and their usury: yet will our ideas scarcely come up to the extortions which, in fact, we find to have been practised upon them.

But the bad police of the country was another obstacle to improvements; and rendered all communication dangerous, and all property precarious.

A nation may, by degrees, be brought to bear a tax of fifteen shillings in the pound, but a sudden and precarious tax can never be imposed to that amount, without a very visible necessity, especially in an age so little accustomed to taxes.

For several years after returning from Leyden he gained a precarious living by writing plays, farces, and buffoneries for the stage.

The rulers of the commonwealth were aware of the intimate connection which the solemn league and covenant had produced between the English Presbyterians and the kirk of Scotland, whence they naturally inferred that, if the pretender to the English were once seated on the Scottish throne, their own power would he placed on a very precarious footing.

No longer even was he a rebel leader who had succeeded in establishing his precarious power by the sword alone.

The Prophet found himself strong enough, and without any compunction he inflicted the severest chastisement upon them, more especially as an example to the neighbouring tribes of the retribution in store for all who dared to revolt against his newly-won but still precarious power.

He was not strong enough to proclaim a destructive war against either faith, but he allowed them to exist in his dominions upon a precarious footing, always liable to abuse, attack, and profanation.

I own your merits:I also am indebted to you for my life:but you are a foreigner, your family unknown,your fortune precarious:I could wish it were otherwise;believe, I find in myself an irresistable impulse to love you, and I know nothing would give me greater pleasure than to convince you of it.

Content with freedom, and precarious greatness.

The case of the Arabs in Syria is even more precarious.

It is only by the extent to which this system has been pushed of late that we have been made fully aware of its irresistible tendency to subject our own banks and currency to a vast controlling power in a foreign land, and it adds a new argument to those which illustrate their precarious situation.