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Updated: June 3, 2025
We had once more mounted the litter, and once more the bearers, with their heads beneath the pole, bore us on at their accustomed swinging trot. Phorenice was telling me about her new supplies of gold. She had made fresh sumptuary laws, it appeared.
Upon the sober and industrious poor, taxes upon such commodities act as sumptuary laws, and dispose them either to moderate, or to refrain altogether from the use of superfluities which they can no longer easily afford. Their ability to bring up families, in consequence of this forced frugality, instead of being diminished, is frequently, perhaps, increased by the tax.
Out of ninety-eight candidates for the office of assistant teacher, whom I examined on one occasion, only one knew the meaning of the word "sumptuary," although in the public discussion then going on about the license law, the word was in daily use in the public papers; in fact, I took it out of the newspaper of that morning.
These did Japan greater harm among the common people than even the murder of the Queen. Yet no sooner had Japan established herself again than once more sumptuary regulations were issued. The first was an order against wearing white dress in wintertime. People were to attire themselves in nothing but dark-coloured garments, and those who refused to obey were coerced in many ways.
As for the sumptuary laws, the first one was decreed in 1215, after the fall of the Pierleoni, and it imposed upon all Jews, and other heretics whomsoever, the wearing of a large circle of yellow cloth sewn upon the breast. In the following century, according to Baracconi, this mark was abolished by the statutes of the city and the Jews were made to wear a scarlet mantle in public; but all licensed Jewish physicians, being regarded as public benefactors, were exempted from the rule. For the profession of medicine is one which the Hebrews have always followed with deserved success, and it frequently happened in Rome that the Pope's private physician, who lived in the Vatican and was a personage of confidence and importance, was a professed Israelite from the Ghetto, who worshipped in the synagogue on Saturdays and looked with contempt and disgust upon his pontifical patient as an eater of unclean food. There was undoubtedly a law compelling a certain number of the Jews to hear sermons once a week, first in the Trinit
Anything that requires much labour, or that cannot readily be produced in the colony, is, dearer; but, on the other hand, it should be remembered that money is more easily obtainable. Protectionist duties and heavy freights form an effectual sumptuary tax; and as most of the duties are ad valorem, first-class articles are heavily handicapped, and a premium put upon the importation of shoddy.
This absurd extravagance was carried so far that Charles V. found himself forced at length to proclaim sumptuary laws for its repression. The style of the banquets given on grand occasions was regulated on a scale of almost puerile splendor. Such excessive luxury naturally led to great corruption of manners and the commission of terrible crimes.
Assuredly no sumptuary laws were needed to restrain such revels as these. "On another occasion, in consequence of the additional fatigues of the day, I allowed some pieces of fat to be fried with our meat." Horrible gluttony! After they had been some months out, an extraordinary desire for fat diet took possession of the wanderers. At first they felt disgust for it, and rejected it contemptuously, but suddenly a total change occurred. "The relish continued to increase as our bullocks grew poorer; and we became as eager to examine the condition of a slaughtered beast as the natives, whose practice in that respect we had formerly ridiculed." When they caught an emu, their first and eager care was to pluck the feathers and cut into the flesh, "to see how thick the fat was, and whether it was a rich yellow." The Spartan Doctor himself was not proof against the greasy fascination. Hear his confession of a frailty, and record of its quick-succeeding punishment. 'Tis
How will Mr. Greg keep up the palaces, parks, and studs, when he has taken away the retinues of servants? If he does not take care, he will find himself wielding the bosom of sumptuary reform in the most sweeping manner before he is aware of it.
Is real estate more or less spared than personal property? Is he who produces more favored than he who consumes? Have our taxation laws the character of sumptuary laws? What, professor! is that all that science has taught you?
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