None but an idiot will cavil, because a rich man adorns his mansion, with elegance and taste, and receives his friends in a style of liberal hospitality. Even if he go beyond the bounds of republican simplicity, and waste his substance, it matters not, beyond the circle of his creditors and heirs; if the example be not followed by thousands, who are unable, or unwilling, to be edified, by Æsop’s pleasant fable of the ox and the frog.
But it never can be thus. The machinery is exceedingly simple, in these manufactories, from which men of broken fortunes are annually turned out upon the world.
When once involved in the whirl of fashion, extrication is difficult and painful—the descent is wonderfully easy—sed revocare gradum! The maniac hugs not his fetters, more forcibly, than the devotee of fashion clings, with the assistance, occasionally, of his better half, to his position in society.
These remarks are, by no means, exclusively applicable to those, who move in the higher circles. This is a world of gradation, and there are few so humble, as to be entirely without their imitators.
What shall we do to be saved? This anxious inquiry is not always offered, I apprehend, in relation to the concerns of a better world. How often, and how oppressively, the spirit of this interrogatory has agitated the bosom of the impoverished man of fashion! What shall I do to be saved, from the terrible disgrace of being exposed, in the court of fashion, as being guilty of the awful crime of poverty, and disfranchised, as one of the beau monde? And what will he not do, to work out this species of salvation, with fear and trembling? We have seen how readily, under the influence of pride and poverty, treason may be committed by men of lofty standing. It would be superfluous, therefore, to inquire, if there be any crime, which men, heavily oppressed by their embarrassments, and restrained thereby, from drinking more deeply of that luxury, with which they are already drunk, will hesitate to commit.
No. LXXXVIII.
There is a popular notion, that sumptuary laws are applicable to monarchies—not to republics. The very reverse is the truth. Montesquieu says, Spirit of Laws, book vii. ch. 4, that “luxury is extremely proper for monarchies, and that, under this government, there should be no sumptuary laws.”
Sumptuary laws are looked upon, at present, as the relics of an age gone by. These laws, in a strict sense, are designed to restrain pecuniary extravagance. It has often been attempted to stigmatize the wholesome, prohibitory laws of the several States, in regard to the sale of intoxicating liquor, by calling them sumptuary laws. The distinction is clear—sumptuary laws strike at the root of extravagance—the prohibitory, license laws, as they are called, strike, not only at the root of extravagance, but at the root of every crime, in the decalogue.