Note 236-10 — Chapter II

From the foregoing, it is intelligible why most modern writers, even those otherwise opposed to luxury, are not favorably inclined towards sumptuary laws. "It is the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception (?) the greatest spendthrifts in the society. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will." (Adam Smith, I, ch. 3.) Compare Rau, Lehrbuch II, § 358 ff. R. Mohl, Polizeiwissenschaft, II, 434 ff.

Montesquieu's opinion that in monarchies luxury is necessary to preserve the difference of class but that in republics it is a cause of decline, is very peculiar. In the latter, therefore, luxury should be restricted in every way: agrarian laws should modify the too great difference in property and sumptuary laws restrain the too glaring manifestations of extravagance. (Esprit des Lois, VII, 4.) As an auxiliary to the history of sumptuary laws, compare Boxmann, De Legibus Romanorum sumptuarias, 1816. Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del Luxo y de las Leyes sumtuarias de Espana, II, 1788; Vertot, Sur l'Establissement des Lois somptuaires parmi les Français, in the Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscr., VI, 737 seq, besides the sections on the subject in Delamarre, Traité de la Police, 1772 ff.; Penning, De Luxu et Legibus sumtuariis, 1826. (Holland.)