I oppose Human Rights. Who's with me?

[Perd Hapley]

A grand entrance would not go amiss.

[De Selby]

The "right of sustenance" you're describing would be more properly described not as a right of the serf, but rather a responsibility of the leige.  Noblesse oblige.

If I claim to in some sense own or control another person, I become to a degree responsible for their well being.  Quid pro quo.

Once they leave my service I have no further responsibility to them.  In a feudal system, if the serf leaves the land, my land, my responsibility for their well-being ends and they are on their own.  They are "out laws", outside the system, bound to none but provided for by none as well.

After slavery and the feudal system went away the "right to sustenance" by definition went away as well as there were no more nobles to be directly oblige'd.

A government of free men has no responsibility to care for its citizenry, merely to provide a system where they are not impeded by said government or the criminal actions of others in caring for themselves. 

The "safety net", orphanages, homes for invalids or the aged, soup kitchens and the like, is to be provided by willing private members of the society, whether family or voluntary charitable organizations.  A society founded on Western moral structures would have those services provided or funded privately by the wealthy who retain a certain sense of noblesse oblige to the less fortunate in general.

I think this is the answer someone like Nozick would give to that reasoning.  As a response, it is certainly consistent with the negative rights theory.   

This was clearly not, however, the philosophy of the Founding Fathers.  That sense of obligation was part of their ethic and culture, and it wasn't seen as a mere generosity - people just plain had a right to live, and that included a right to claim at least some meager resources for the purposes of remaining alive.  This was tied to membership in the Nation, the same way that serfdom tied your rights to a lord.  That was the big change in the period - the State assumed the role of lord, as opposed to a natural person, and it came with many of the same privileges and responsibilities.

[Matthew Carberry]

You're obviously more informed on the subject than I am, but speaking from ignorance, I really have a hard time seeing any of the FF saying it was the right of the poor to have support that drove things like almshouses versus a sense of the duty of all Christian (read "moral") individuals in a society to care for those in need. Government-managed almshouses and outside relief merely provided a framework for them to do so collectively and efficiently.

There's a nuance there.

You don't have a moral right to support, but as a decent person I have a moral duty to provide it.  In the same way that I have a moral duty to care for any God's weaker, less able, creatures.

It's like grace, unearned and nondemandable by those who receive it.