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Updated: June 3, 2025
Nor is any modern legislature so unintelligent or so oppressive as to propose sumptuary laws; that is, to prescribe how expensively a man or woman must dress; but in the mediaeval times those were thought very important.
If by some ingenious sumptuary enactment the latter class could be sequestrated or relegated to the background for a certain period say ten years the latter might increase and multiply, and quite, in vulgar parlance, get the start of it.
I added that if all the States should pass such a law, and other laws fixing a low price for a certain number of seats at the theatres, or obliging the managers to give one free performance every month, as the law does in Paris, and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays "I see what you mean," said my friend, a little impatiently. "You mean sumptuary legislation.
We shall see in the sequel that this anticipation of the freedmen's attitude was not unjustified, and that the increase of their voting power still continued to be an effective battle-cry for the demagogue who was eager to increase his following in the city. Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.
I have read an account by an old-fashioned English traveler of a Venetian marriage which he saw, sixty or seventy years ago, at the church of San Giorgio Maggiore: "After a crowd of nobles," he says, "in their usual black robes, had been some time in attendance, the gondolas appearing, exhibited a fine show, though all of them were painted of a sable hue, in consequence of a sumptuary law, which is very necessary in this place, to prevent an expense which many who could not bear it would incur; nevertheless the barcarioli, or boatmen, were dressed in handsome liveries; the gondolas followed one another in a line, each carrying two ladies, who were likewise dressed in black.
Although the financial wisdom of the age was doing its best to impede commerce, to prevent the influx of foreign wares, to prohibit the outflow of specie in obedience to the universal superstition, which was destined to survive so many centuries, that gold and silver alone constituted wealth while, at the same time, in deference to the idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation, it was vigorously opposing mulberry culture, silk manufactures, and other creations of luxury, which, in spite of the hostility of government sages, were destined from that time forward to become better mines of wealth for the kingdom than the Indies had been for Spain, yet on the whole the arts of peace were in the ascendant in France.
According to these sumptuary decrees gentlemen who are invited to entertainments at court, and who for any reason have no right to military, naval or civil service uniform, are compelled to appear in a species of court dress, consisting of a coat cut after the fashion of the last, rather than of the present century.
At Vienna, the empress-queen was not more solicitous in promoting the trade and internal manufactures of her dominions, by sumptuary regulations, necessary restrictions on foreign superfluities, by opening her ports in the Adriatic, and giving proper encouragement to commerce, than she was careful and provident in reforming the economy of her finances, maintaining a respectable body of forces, and guarding, by defensive alliances, against the enterprise of his Prussian majesty, on whose military power she looked with jealousy and distrust.
It is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon imports. To the English manufacturer or engineer government appeared as a necessary evil. It allowed the engineer to make roads and canals, after a troublesome and expensive process of application.
He also founded many public libraries, and he wished to establish one in every town, but this was beyond the extent of his power. Not content with providing for the minds of his subjects, Hongwou did his utmost to supply the needs of the aged. He cut down the court expenses and issued sumptuary laws, so that he might devote the sums thus economized to the support of the aged and sick.
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