In Greece, sumptuary laws were seldom or never regarded by the people, who always entered into a tacit and general conspiracy against their enforcement. Notwithstanding the Roman notatio censoria, luxury continued to increase with the growth of wealth. No law of senate or emperor could restrain the tendency. “From first to last,” writes the historian, “all were habitually transgressed.” In the time of Tertullian they appear to be of the past.
Instances of like legislation disfigure the statute-books of every civilized country downward from the fifth century, A. D. All sumptuary laws, at Rome, were formally repealed by the later emperors; but the folly thereafter re-appeared when European society began to rally and segregate under Charlemagne. To illustrate, “in the latter middle ages, knights were allowed to wear gold, and esquires only silver; the former damask, the latter satin of taffeta; when the esquires used damask, velvet was reserved for the knights.” The first legislation of this character, in the modern world, was enacted by Frederick II., in Italy; James I., in Aragon; Philip IV., in France; Edward II. and Edward III., in England. Commencing in France with Charlemagne, it first became extensive and flourished under Philip IV. and Charles VI. From Edward III. until the Reformation, it was in great favor in England. Great was the absurdity to which legislators were carried by this vain policy. In Scotland, for example, one parliament forbade ladies to attend church with the face muffled in a veil, and another fulminated against superfluous banqueting and the inordinate use of foreign spices; while a Danish law provided that no servant girl should wear her hair curled. The edicts of Philip IV. related to extravagance at table and in dress. An edict of Charles V. forbade the use of long-pointed shoes. Charles VI. allowed no one to exceed a soup and two dishes at dinner. Later French kings sought to restrict the use of gold, silver, silks, embroidery, and fine linen. From Blanqui we take a sample ordinance of the character under consideration. “The said Lord the King, being duly informed that the great superfluity of meat at weddings, feasts and banquets, brings about the high price of fowls and game, wills and decrees that the ordinance on this subject be renewed and kept; and for the continuance of the same, that those who make such feasts, as well as the stewards who prepare and conduct them, and the cooks who serve them, be punished with the penalties hereunto affixed. That every sort of fowl and game brought to the markets shall be seen and visited by the poulterer-wardens, in the presence of the officers of the police and bourgeois clerks to the aforesaid, who shall be present at the said markets, and shall cause a report to be made to the police, by the said wardens. The public shall be likewise bound to live according to the ordinance of the King, without exceeding the limit, under penalty of such pecuniary fines as are herein set forth against the inn-keeper, so that neither by private understanding nor common consent shall the ordinance be violated.” During the same year, another ordinance provided “that no bourgeois woman shall have a chariot; no bourgeois man or woman shall wear green, or grey, or ermine, and they shall dispose of those they have, by a year from Easter next. The dukes, counts and barons of 6000 livres, in land, or more, may have four robes a year, and no more, and the women as many. A knight who has 3000 livres, in land, may have three robes a year and no more; and one of these three robes shall be for summer. At the principal meals of the day no one shall have but two viands and a pork soup, and let him not deceive about it. It is ordained that no prelate or baron shall have a robe for body of more than 25 Tournish sous, a Paris ell.” In 1294 it was decreed “that every manner of people, who have not an income of 6000 Tournish livres, shall not use, and will not be able to use, any gold or silver plate for drinking, for eating, or for other use, and that no person, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, shall practice any fraud about it.”
In France, laws of this character disappeared near the end of the 16th century. Under Louis XV. all such laws were practically a dead letter. “These ordinances are the history of but yesterday,” says an able and profound student of French legislation; “but ideas and sentiments have gone far in advance of facts. We have difficulty in comprehending the interference of government in the domestic affairs of families, and in contracts which concern only private individuals. Opinion has undergone an entire revolution. Sumptuary laws can no longer be proposed. We need not think the change is due to our wisdom, to our pretended superiority to the ancients; let us simply recognize that the essential principle of society has changed; the world moves on another basis.... In no century were these laws observed to any great extent. Enactments of this kind were never effectual in France. Since the Revolution, no sumptuary laws have been enacted, and yet the luxury of attire which formerly distinguished the nobility has disappeared. A duke dresses like anybody else, and he would be ridiculed if he sought to distinguish himself by a manner of dress different from others.”
It has been observed by one of the great statesmen of England, that the broad principles of freedom had been early recognized in that country, and understood by even the citizens of minimum intelligence; for instance, freedom of locomotion, freedom in the disposition of property, freedom of opinion in politics and religion. But that other important features of the same principle were not so quickly and clearly understood. “I refer,” he continues, “to such matters as freedom of commercial intercourse and exchange, freedom of contract in the natural rise and fall of wages and in the condition of labor; freedom of individual taste and expenditure, in the more private concerns of life. In many cases, these were matters which affected the poor and rich alike, but principally the poor, who, in their meagre parliamentary representation, enjoyed few opportunities for effectual protest. One can only account for the continuance of those which materially affected the better classes, who did enjoy representation, to the fact that, not being familiar with the fundamental economic laws, which are now so widely understood, they were not prompted to any practical resistance. It is highly probable, too, that for want of this knowledge, most people rested satisfied with the vague idea that, in some way or other, though not very clear, such restrictive legislation produced some good to somebody.” We pass over those legislative and executive interferences, which present “every possible contrivance for hampering the energies of commerce.” Purely economic questions are not germane to our discussion; such as the numerous and ingenious restraints upon foreign trade; the attempts to regulate the rate of wages and the price of food.
Richard II., Henry IV., and Edward IV. legislated against the liveried suits of the nobility. This was also prohibited by Henry VII.; and yet, even under James I., says Hume, “we find ambassadors accompanied by a suite of 500 or 300 noblemen.” During the reign of Edward III. it was enacted that no man should be allowed more than two courses at dinner or supper, or more than two kinds of food in each course. Three courses were permitted on the festival days of the year. Foreign cloth was allowed to the royal family alone. Unless a man possessed at least £100 per annum he was forbidden furs, skins and silks. During the same reign, another act divided the people of England into classes, and prescribed the apparel of each. In the social scale it did not go higher than knights, and minutely regulated the clothing of women and children. It was repealed the following year. In 1363 it was enacted that servants should have only one meal a day of flesh or fish. The statute of 1444 attempted to regulate the price of clothing for each year: a bailiff, 50s.; principal servant, 40s.; ordinary servant, 33s. 4d. James I., of Scotland, forbade not only “sumptuous clothing,” but the use of pies and baked meats, to all under the rank of baron. The Scottish sumptuary law of 1612 was the last in Great Britain. The English laws were largely repealed during the reign of James I. A few remained on the statute book as late as 1856. Mr. Froude has exposed the folly of their existence.
It has been said of the English laws they “were at all times inspired by a desire to arrest an irresistible movement, resulting from the very force of things—from the logical development of human activity. They were, moreover, powerless, and always evaded by a sort of tacit and general conspiracy of all the citizens, without anyone being able to find fault with the principle, without anyone thinking of contesting the power of the legislator on this point.”
Roscher remarks: “In Ireland the government had endeavored for a long time to preserve that country from the ravages of alcohol, by the imposition of the highest taxes, and the severest penalties for smuggling. Every workman in an illegal distillery was transported for seven years, and every town in which such a one was found was subject to a heavy fine. All in vain. Only numberless acts of violence were now added to beastly drunkenness.”
In another place, Roscher continues thus: “Where it has been attempted to suppress the consumption of popular delicacies, the impossibility of enforcing sumptuary laws has been most strikingly observed. Thus, in the 16th century, an effort was made as regards brandy; in the 17th, as regards tobacco; in the 18th, as regards coffee. The Hessian law of 1530 provided that only apothecaries should retail brandy. In 1624 Papal excommunication was fulminated against all who took snuff in church, and was repeated in 1690. According to a Turkish law of 1610, all smokers should have their pipes broken against the nose. In 1634 a Russian law prohibited smoking under penalty of death. In Switzerland, even in the 17th century, no one could smoke except in secret. In its native place even coffee had a hard struggle. Prohibited in Turkey in 1633 under pain of death; it was still prohibited in Basel in 1769, and could be sold by apothecaries only as medicine. In Hanover the coffee trade was prohibited in 1780. When governments discovered the fruitlessness of these efforts, they gave up the prohibition of these luxuries, and instead substituted taxes on them, thus aiming to combine a moral and a fiscal end. Even Cato took this course. His office of censor, which united the highest moral superintendence with the highest financial guidance, must of itself have led him in this direction.”
Strange it is how slowly men learn by experience. We know of the many oppressions in England “for opinion’s sake.” History tells us that the puritan fathers sought “freedom of conscience” in the wilds of America. Yet, scarcely were the “pilgrims” of New England wonted to a strange and inhospitable land, than what they required for themselves was denied to others. In their fanaticism, the “soul liberty” of Roger Williams was violated in every conceivable way. Personal freedom was violated to an extent that is now the detestation of right-thinking persons. Execrable for their tyrannical spirit, are some of the records of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven Colony and Connecticut. The following extracts are taken from the records of the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay:
“1635: Whereas, complaints hath bene made to this Courte that dyvers persons, within this jurisdiction, doe usually absent themselves from Church meetings upon the Lord’s Day, power is therefore given to any two assistants to heare and sensure, either by fine or imprisonment, all misdemeanors of that kind, committed by any inhabitant within this jurisdiction, provided they exceede not the fine of 15 shillings for any one offense.”