"Sumptuary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... performances of Parsifal should wear mantillas instead of aigrettes is almost the first serious attempt to bring the arts of music and dress into a true and fitting relation. We are therefore not in the least surprised to learn that a movement is on foot to promote sumptuary legislation to secure this end as part and parcel of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE's far-reaching programme of social reform. Pending the realisation of these schemes the Editor of Music for the Million has had the happy thought of interviewing a number of distinguished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... Mr. Gurney, the liquor party are jubilant over the result of the trial. I heard Captain McWriggler expatiating upon it this morning, and he said the Act and all sumptuary laws of ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the habitation to the sepulchre, is generally considered as an occasion which calls for the utmost display. Torches, priests, psalmody, are sought for with a spirit of rivalry which easily explains the sumptuary laws of the Florentine and Roman statute-books, and which, unnoticed but not extinguished in the present age, in a poorer must have been highly offensive to the frugality and jealousies of a republic. The religious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... grandmother that he first abstained from meat. For, long after the doctrine of karma and sams[a]ra[47] is established, animal sacrifices are not only permitted but enjoined; and the epic characters shoot deer and even eat cows. We think, in short, that the change began as a sumptuary measure only. In the case of human sacrifice there is doubtless a civilized repugnance to the act, which is clearly seen in many passages where the slaughter of man is made purely symbolical. The only wonder is that ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... censor, the name of the brother of Flaminius from the roll of senators, and the brother of Scipio from that of the equites. He attempted a vigorous reform, but the current of corruption could only be stemmed for awhile. The effect of the sumptuary laws, which were passed through his influence, was temporary and unsatisfactory. No legislation has proved of avail against a deep-seated corruption of morals, for the laws will be avoided, even if ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... within which legislation would, by this process, be confined, would be exceedingly narrow, in comparison with those it at present occupies, there can be no doubt. All monopolies, all special privileges, all sumptuary laws, all restraints upon any traffic, bargain, or contract, that was naturally lawful, [1] all restraints upon men's natural rights, the whole catalogue of mala prohibita, and all taxation to which the taxed parties had not individually, severally, and freely ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... SUMPTUARY LAWS, passed in various lands and ages to restrict excess in dress, food, and luxuries generally; are to be found in the codes of Solon, Julius Caesar, and other ancient rulers; Charles VI. of France restricted dinners to one soup and two other dishes; appear at various times in English ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... moral obligation, a virtue. On these principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors, the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and all the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts of feminine violation either accomplished or attempted, produced three revolutions! And was it not a grand event, sanctioned by the decrees of the country, that these ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... documentary evidence from which much can be learned about the legal status of the masses during the Tokugawa period. This, as I have said, was the period of the most elaborated regulation. The extent to which the people were controlled can be best inferred from the nature and number of the sumptuary laws to which they were subjected. Sumptuary laws in Old Japan probably exceeded in multitude and minuteness anything of which Western legal history yields record. Rigidly as the family-cult dictated behaviour in the home, strictly as the commune enforced its standards ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... it seems, as the time is now with us, when a great many people did not know what to do with their money. There were sumptuary laws which forbade their spending it, either they or their wives or daughters, in dress; apparently they could not even wear Genoa velvet, which had to be sold abroad for the corruption of the outside world; and this is said to be the reason why there were so many palaces built in Genoa in the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... restriction of their own making to preserve their power. Would you say that a Bernese is not free, because he is subject to the sumptuary laws, which he himself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of English visiters to Paris. The fame of French cooks and actors is universal; all are eager to taste their productions, and witness their performances. Let a tyrannical royal ordinance or sumptuary law close the playhouses and cut down the bills of fare from a volume to a page, and a sensible diminution will ensue in the influx of foreigners into France. However great the desire to visit Versailles, stare at the Vendome column, and ramble round the Palais Royal, those attractions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... last generation invariably elaborated sumptuary laws in this respect, enjoining upon you special suits of different colours to tally with particular days. I would not recommend staring white for a chalk stream, but otherwise the colour is a thing of small consequence. A ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... not. I had trouble on the road with a policeman over the rear light of my car. There is no doubt that England is efficiently policed. And so my mind stole back to America with a new uneasiness. I recollected tales which I had heard about sumptuary laws regulating the dress of American women, both in and out of the water. I saw the police invading restaurants and snatching cigarettes from the mouths of women. I saw drink being driven underground by ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... been. But even the feudal ages were in practice thus far democratic, that every feudal potentate knew that any laws which he made would in all probability return upon himself. His feathers might be cut off for breaking a sumptuary law. His head might be cut off for high treason. But the modern laws are almost always laws made to affect the governed class, but not the governing. We have public-house licensing laws, but not sumptuary laws. That ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... would not put on his hat in the prince's presence:[*] all the prisons of Spain were thrown open, and all the prisoners received their freedom, as if the event the most honorable and most fortunate had happened to the monarchy:[**] and every sumptuary law with regard to apparel was suspended during Charles's residence in Spain. The infanta, however, was only shown to her lover in public; the Spanish ideas of decency being so strict, as not to allow of any further intercourse, till the arrival ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... sumptuary laws to restrain the number of guests at feasts;—not only the master of the feast, but all the guests too, were liable to the penalty. It was also enacted, that more than ten asses should not be spent at any ordinary feast. Ten asses was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... so to define a "protectionist tariff" as to permit (a) the total prohibition of certain imports; (b) the imposition of sumptuary or revenue customs duties on commodities not produced at home; (c) the imposition of customs duties which did not exceed by more than five per cent a countervailing excise on similar commodities produced at home; (d) export duties. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... money] circulate, put in circulation; withdraw from circulation. [change the type of currency] exchange currencies, change money. charge interest; pay interest; lose interest. Adj. monetary, pecuniary, crumenal^, fiscal, financial, sumptuary, numismatic, numismatical^; sterling; nummary^. Phr. barbarus ipse placet dummodo sit dives [Lat.] [Ovid]; but the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels [Tennyson]; Gelt regiert die Welt [G.], money rules the world, money makes the world go round; nervos belli pecuniam infinitam ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... group themselves around the grave questions of an empire. The guests were now seated at the table laden with the first course, which they ate as provincials eat, without shame at possessing a good appetite, and not as in Paris, where it seems as if jaws gnashed under sumptuary laws, which made it their business to contradict the laws of anatomy. In Paris people eat with their teeth, and trifle with their pleasure; in the provinces things are done naturally, and interest is perhaps rather too much concentrated on the grand and universal means of existence ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... concerned with prescribing the ultimate qualities of life. When it tries to do so by sumptuary legislation, nothing but mischief is invoked. Its business is to provide opportunities, not to announce ultimate values; to remove oppressive evil and to invent new resources for enjoyment. With the enjoyment itself it can have no concern. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... historians. Like so many other arts and industries of the country, silkworms are believed to have been introduced from China. For some time prior to the opening of Japan to European trade and influences the silk industry had rather languished owing to the enforcement of certain sumptuary laws confining the wearing of silk garments to a select class of the community, but so soon as Japan discarded her policy of isolation from the rest of the world the production of and demand for silk rapidly increased, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the least equivocation. It demanded the payment of the public debt in coin, the resumption of specie payment, taxation for revenue only, local self-government, and State supervision of corporations. It also denounced sumptuary laws and the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and children have not the sense not to want all they see. Any economical reform amongst the extravagant classes that would leave more and better food within reach of the hard-working classes would be highly beneficial to both. Sometimes I wish we could return to that sumptuary law of Queen Elizabeth which commanded the rich to eat fish and fast from flesh-meat certain days of the week." Here Mr. Jones too abruptly paused. Lady Angleby had grown exceedingly red in the face; Bessie Fairfax ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... fellow-sufferers' in the mixed-measles ward. The triangular lawn upon which they are browsing is theirs to gambol on when the sun shines, but cross the walk that borders it they never can, any more than the babies with whom they play. Sumptuary law rules the island they are on. Habeas corpus and the constitution stop short of the ferry. Even Comstock's authority does not cross it: the one exception to the rule that dolls and sheep and babies shall not visit from ward to ward is in favor of the rubber dolls, and the etiquette of the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... set down to the credit account of other universities the non-existence of luxury in this or other modes, whilst, meantime, it is well known to the fair inquirer that each or all are indulgences, not at all or so much as in idea proscribed by the sumptuary edicts of those universities; but, simply, by the lower scale of their general revenues. And this lower scale, it will be said—how do you account for that? I answer, not so much by the general inferiority of continental Europe to Great Britain in diffusive wealth (though ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... costume, in which the distinguished men of the nineteenth century might descend to posterity without the drawbacks which I have pointed out? Robespierre had such a costume designed, and other great sumptuary legislators have had the same idea in their minds; and I would not push the suggestion so far as to imply that we should be compelled to wear this costume in ordinary life. It might be one kept to gratify the artistic ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... friends, anyway?" ruminated the old lawyer. "It's a kind of sumptuary offense. People will marry. And it's good policy to have 'em. If they happen to overdo it ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... residence, or the mere relaxation of anxiety, or perhaps the natural abatement of the complaint from lapse of time, seems to me to have done me good. However, to prevent your wondering how this came about, or in what manner I let myself in for it, I must tell you that the sumptuary law, supposed to have introduced plain living, was the origin of my misfortune. For whilst your epicures wish to bring into fashion the products of the earth, which are not forbidden by the law, they flavour mushrooms, petits choux, and every kind ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and more wide-spread among the young nobility had no fiercer enemy than he. He held that a man of great lineage who spent his substance on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor to his country, and no one demanded with greater insistence than he that the great laws of the year 18 B.C., the sumptuary law, the laws on marriage and adultery, should be enforced with the severest rigor. Julia, on the other hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joyous companies of elegant youths, an easy, brilliant life ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... private property—a condition that was to be preserved by vigilant education of the young in ways of thinking, that should make the possession of private property odious or inconceivable. There are to be sumptuary laws of a moderate kind. The government is to be in the hands of the elders. The children are to be taken away from their parents at the age of five; reared and educated in public establishments; and returned to their parents at the age of sixteen ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... to Poetus, he does indeed tell him what he had for dinner at a friend's house, but only by way of explaining that he had been very unwell from eating mushrooms and such dishes, which his host had had cooked in order not to contravene a recent sumptuary law.[452] The Letters are worth far more as negative evidence of the usual character of dinners than either the invectives (vituperationes) against a Piso or an Antony, or the lively wit of the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... correct the various evils which had crept into the state, and to obtain the enactment of several laws suitable to the altered condition of the commonwealth. He attempted, by severe sumptuary laws, to restrain the extravagance which pervaded all classes of society. But the most important of his changes this year (B.C. 40) was the reformation of the Calendar, which was a real benefit to his country and the civilized world, and which he accomplished ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon the extravagance it occasioned,—the expenses of some smokers being estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the sagacity to secure a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... also adopted many sumptuary laws regulating what should be eaten and what should be used, and what not. All male persons were subjected to severe physical training, for Sparta, in her education, always dwelt upon physical development ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... professional life, it has been a part of my duty to examine candidates for the office of teacher in the public schools. 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. On another occasion, out of fourteen candidates for the office of Principal ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... pink frocks and green sashes, if in fashion at all, were never seen at parties; and that long trousers were absolutely essential, from the point of view of custom, for boys of our hero's age. Many woes were attendant upon the discovery that these half-suspected sumptuary laws were certain facts. ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... atolls, where the food supply was scantest, it was enforced by law. On Vaitupu, in the Ellice group, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring. Affection for children was very strong ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... terror and confusion, but it was no form or face to inspire alarm that met her eye. It was a cavalier, holding by the rein a horse richly caparisoned; and though his dress was plainer and less exaggerated than that usually worn by men of rank, its materials were those which the sumptuary laws (constantly broken, indeed, as such laws ever must be) confined to nobles. Though his surcoat was but of cloth, and the colour dark and sober, it was woven in foreign looms,—an unpatriotic luxury, above the degree of knight,—and edged deep with the costliest ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Halicarnassus, when we were fairly beyond ear-shot of the city next morning, "I don't approve of sumptuary laws, and I like America to be the El Dorado of the poor man, and I go for the largest liberty of the individual; but I do think there ought to be a clause in the Constitution providing that servants shall not be dressed and educated and accomplished up to the point of making ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not an advocate for the agrarian law nor for sumptuary regulations, but I contend that the people amongst whom the law of primogeniture exists, and among whom corporate bodies are encouraged, and immense salaries annexed to useless and indeed hereditary offices, is oppressed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... evil effects of that particular "species of criminal legislation to which sumptuary laws belong," Mr. Carter, after dwelling upon the subject ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... France there must first be a smaller number of cocottes. It is not impossible, indeed, that if the approachable-irreproachable young ladies were more numerous, the cocottes would be less numerous. 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 Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... is private expenditure, and cannot be controlled; and that railway traveling is of a public nature, and can be made subject to public opinion. But the fault is in that public opinion which desires to control matters of this nature. Such an arrangement partakes of all the vice of a sumptuary law, and sumptuary laws are in their very essence mistakes. It is well that a man should always have all for which he is willing to pay. If he desires and obtains more than is good for him, the punishment, and thus also the preventive, will ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... ministers and great functionaries received presents Because he had been successful (hated) But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate By turns, we all govern and are governed Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified Despised those who were grateful Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation Indulging them frequently with oracular advice Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity Men who meant what they said and said what they meant Negotiated as if ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... tops. The canal lies dusk in the eventide, but the dark surface throws into relief a crowd of gondolas, and the lithe, glowing figures of their gondoliers. The boats themselves are long and narrow as now, but without the indented prora which has become universal; the sumptuary law of the Republic has not yet robbed them of colour, and instead of the present "coffin" we see canopies of gaily-hued stuffs supported on four light pillars. The gondolier himself is commonly tricked out in almost fantastic finery; red cap with ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... which have been drawn from the body of the book: at most they point to its several editions or redactions. In the Tale of the "Ensorcelled Prince" (vol. i. 77) Mr. Lane (i. 135) conjectured that the four colours of the fishes were suggested by the sumptuary laws of the Mameluke Soldan, Mohammed ibn Kala'un, "subsequently to the commencement of the eighth century of the Flight, or fourteenth of our era." But he forgets that the same distinction of dress was enforced by the Caliph Omar after the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636; that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were notorious—Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication. He affected to despise ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fire.] Sumptuary laws—that's what we want. If women didn't wear bracelets, they ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... first place (and this is a most difficult task for every one), he imposed on himself a rigid temperance, and maintained it as if he had been living under the obligation of the sumptuary laws. These were originally brought to Rome from the edicts of Lycurgus and the tables of laws compiled by Solon, and were for a long time strictly observed. When they had become somewhat obsolete, they were re-established by Sylla, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... according to the practice of sovereign princes. Persons of the highest social standing did not disdain to labor in their shops and counting-houses. Frugal in their domestic life, the Florentines strove to maintain habits of frugality by strict sumptuary laws. Limits were set to indulgence in finery, food, etc. The population of Florence somewhat exceeded one hundred thousand. In the neighborhood of the city, there was a multitude of attractive, richly furnished villas and country-houses. Among the industries in which the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... withholding the right of primogeniture in the succession of heirs. It has been proposed to prevent the ruin of moderate estates, and to restrain the use, and consequently the desire of great ones, by sumptuary laws. These different methods are more or less consistent with the interests of commerce, and may be adopted, in different degrees, by a people whose national object is wealth: and they have their degree ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Health, and identified himself closely with the rites and customs of the people. He inculcated that sense of duty which the Romans called pietas, and attempted to improve the morals of the citizens by the enactment of sumptuary laws; the philosophers hoped to do good in the same direction by appealing to the intellect and reason, a method that was equally ineffectual. Marriages and an increased birth-rate were encouraged, and parents were honoured ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... thrifty and individualistic folk made a complete failure of the attempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary legislation can succeed with us. That, however, is neither here nor there. The gist of the matter is, that because such things succeed in Germany, gives not the slightest reason for supposing that they will succeed with us. If this outline of their history ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... God!" Far be it, I repeat, from such a one to do such things as these. But I trust I may be pardoned for venturing the statements that excessive drinking already was going out of fashion in this country, that the treating evil was in a fair way to die a natural death anyhow, and that the present sumptuary attempt to cure us overnight of a habit which has been ingrained in the very fibre of the race for so far back as the history of the race runs, has only had the effect of making ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... "I have made sumptuary laws, but if they are not enough I will make more; at least they shall be numerous, if they are not good. By the horn of Beelzebub, six pages, M. de Bussy, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... doorway, at the head of the stairs, there stood the still trim and active figure of an old woman, with something of the mouse likeness seen in her grand-daughter, in the close cap, high hat, and cloth dress, that sumptuary opinion, if not law, prescribed for the burgher matron, a white apron, silver chain and bunch of keys at her girdle. Due and loving greetings passed between mother and son, after the longest and most perilous absence of Master Headley's life, and he then presented Giles, to whom the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... shillings, shall forfeit forty shillings for every yard so sold." Sixteen shillings, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silver as four-and-twenty shillings of our present money, was, at that time, reckoned not an unreasonable price for a yard of the finest cloth; and as this is a sumptuary law, such cloth, it is probable, had usually been sold somewhat dearer. A guinea may be reckoned the highest price in the present times. Even though the quality of the cloths, therefore, should be supposed equal, and that of the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... difference of opinion among ingenious men. There are some who hold that it is the business of a government to meddle with every part of the system of human life, to regulate trade by bounties and prohibitions, to regulate expenditure by sumptuary laws, to regulate literature by a censorship, to regulate religion by an inquisition. Others go to the opposite extreme, and assign to government a very narrow sphere of action. But the very narrowest sphere that ever was assigned to governments by any school ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Japanese government has interfered with the originality of the people. "The genius of their government seems to forbid any exercise of ingenuity in producing articles for the gratification of wealth and luxury. Sumptuary laws rigidly enforce the forms, colors, material, and time of changing the dress of all. As to luxury of furniture, the thing is unknown in Japan.... It would be an endless task to attempt to put down all the acts of a Japanese that are regulated ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well dressed on the street ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... place, they can never, by any possibility, touch those whose whole income is expended on necessaries; while they do reach those by whom what is required for necessaries is expended on indulgences. In the next place, they operate in some cases as a useful, and the only useful, kind of sumptuary law. A great portion of the expense of the higher and middle classes in most countries is not incurred for the sake of the pleasure afforded by the things on which the money is spent, but from regard to opinion, and an idea that certain ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... concerning the inherent rights of strangers travelling abroad; nothing at all concerning the procedure presumed to obtain among civilised peoples as to the inviolate sacredness of one's personal property from sumptuary and violent search at the hands of unauthorised persons—in short, nothing at all that would have the slightest bearing on, or be of the slightest value in explaining, the present acute situation. Given a modicum ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... average Malay woman has remained unchanged; it is surely the most hideous of the many sumptuary hideosities for which fashion is responsible. This is the more deplorable for that the Malay women, when young, are often extremely pretty. The color scheme they affect is good; these women usually dress in light, flimsy silks of varied hue. Such materials are used at all events among the well-to-do ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... "obedience and authority," "liberty and law," etc., etc. All these are enigmas to him, or, if he affects to understand them at all, he thinks they arise from bad management or bad government, and can and ought to be remedied by repression or sumptuary legislation. He will be a tyrant or slave, a glutton or miser, a fanatic or libertine, a sneak-thief or highway robber, as circumstances may influence him. Think you that the common "fall back" on principle of self-interest—well or ill understood—will ever restrain such a one from ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... sumptuary laws were enacted by parental governments, in the hope of suppressing extravagance in dress, the state of affairs we deplore now, not being a new development of human weakness, but ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... been guilty of any illicit connection. He imposed duties on the importation of foreign goods. The use of litters for travelling, purple robes, and jewels, he permitted only to persons of a certain age and station, and on particular days. He enforced a rigid execution of the sumptuary laws; placing officers about the markets, to seize upon all meats exposed to sale contrary to the rules, and bring them to him; sometimes sending his lictors and soldiers to (30) carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the officers, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 1: Justice regards operations in themselves, as viewed under the aspect of something due: but liberality and magnificence regard sumptuary operations as related to the passions of the soul, albeit in different ways. For liberality regards expenditure in reference to the love and desire of money, which are passions of the concupiscible faculty, and do not hinder the liberal man from giving and spending: so that this virtue ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... dress is much gayer than that ordinarily worn, but there is little difference in the material, the dress of every class being regulated by stringent sumptuary laws. Blues and purples predominate in winter, the lighter and more varied colours being generally confined to materials only adapted for summer use. The ladies have a great partiality for crimson crape, which is generally worn as an under-robe, and peeps daintily out at the bottom of ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... surprising to modern ideas is the one referring to costume, yet it was on this that the judges laid most stress. Even the severest of sumptuary laws has never made the wearing of male dress by a woman a capital crime; yet, though Joan had recanted and been received into the Church, the moment that she put on male attire she was doomed on that account only. Whether she donned it by accident, by treachery, by force, or out of bravado, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... months old. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... behind them. If other importances, not to extend the question, kept themselves down, they were in no direction less obtruded than in that of our friend's dress, adopted once for all as with a sort of sumptuary scruple. He wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black "cut away" coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white—the proper harmony with which, he inveterately considered, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and their habits, would be to repudiate it, and repudiate their descendants, with reprehension and with horror? [Laughter.] And would they not straightway proceed, had they the power, to enact such sumptuary laws as should confine you all henceforth and for evermore, to the same simple fare upon which they and their children throve ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... However austere my sumptuary reform might be, I did not at first extend it to my linen, which was fine and in great quantity, the remainder of my stock when at Venice, and to which I was particularly attached. I had made it so much an object of cleanliness, that it became one of luxury, which was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... drink and cigar was being circulated among us by the cabin boy. Kitty's costume was the most markedly maritime thing that I have ever beheld in any waters, and her white shoes looked (I must confess) supremely well on her pretty little feet. I am no advocate of sumptuary laws; but there should be one prohibiting big-footed women from wearing white shoes. Did these women know what a spatulated effect their feet so shod produce, no law would be needed. Yes, Kitty was superlatively, stridently maritime; you could have known from a great distance ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Tammany and Blair," but still hoping for some way of escape from Grant. Most of the German Liberals rejected the ticket, doubtless finding other objections emphasized by their dissent from Mr. Greeley's well-known attitude on sumptuary legislation. The free-trade Liberals of New York held a meeting of protest, presided over by William Cullen Bryant, and addressed by David A. Wells, Edward Atkinson, and others who had participated in the Cincinnati Convention. But this opposition possessed little importance. The ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was by the would-be reformers of that day alone that such sentiments were held, and it was only by the severity of the punishment attending non-conformity with these regulations that they were ever enforced. In 1796, "the sumptuary law relative to dress had fallen into neglect," and in the next year "it was found so obnoxious and difficult to enforce," says Quincy, "that a law was passed abrogating the whole system of distinction by 'frogs on the cuffs and button-holes,' ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... merchants of the Steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other courts. Neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of Henry VIII. were passed; while there is much, very much, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... minutes, before the shouts of the people, and the braying of martial music, and the confused sound of an approaching multitude, showed that the Queen was near. Troops of horse, variously caparisoned, each more brilliantly as it seemed than another, preceded a train of sumptuary elephants and camels, these too richly dressed, but heavily loaded. Then came the body-guard of the Queen, in armor of complete steel—and then the chariot of Zenobia, drawn by milk-white Arabians. So soon ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Department. This department had charge of the superintendence of offices, enactments, sumptuary regulations, appointments, and all ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... relic of the Sumptuary Laws. One of the earliest instances occurs, 1530, in the interlude of Godly ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... symptoms of an over-fed and plethoric constitution, was now clear and intellectual, and there appeared to be an unencumbered activity about his jaws that argued a vigor and quickness of execution in matters of a sumptuary character, which, when gross and unwieldy from luxury, they never could reach. He was by no means in his usual spirits, it is true, but then he was in much better health, and a vague report of something in the shape of a loan to the clergy, to ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with sumptuary laws for the ladies of my household?" Caterina asked with ineffable disdain, when remonstrance had been made. And they, having gained so much, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... In a sense, certainly, they are ornamental. It is a strange fact, and an ironic, that they spend quite five times the annual amount that was spent by their grandmothers on personal adornment. If they can afford it, well and good: let us have no sumptuary law. But plenty of pretty dresses will not suffice. Pretty manners are needed with them, and are prettier ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... ambitions, as the driving force of socially useful economic activity; he held that a better allocation of labor among different occupations would result, at least in England, if left to individual determination than if regulated or guided; he rejected some types of sumptuary legislation. ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... Law; "We Are Unwilling to Change the Laws of England;" Usury and the Jews; Towns Represented in Parliament; The Fixing of Prices; Sumptuary Laws; The Benefit of Clergy; Partial Codification; The Statute of Westminster I; Law Extended to All People; Labor Makes Men Free; The Freedom of Elections; "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"; Sexual Offences Made ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic taste in sumptuary matters. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... the hard times which closed the century occur in Royston as early as 1795, but the worst part had not come yet. In the following year (1796) we find the principal inhabitants in public meeting assembled, at the Red Lion, passing sumptuary laws binding themselves to economy in the use of wheaten flour, with a view to reduce the consumption of wheat. The meeting set forth its opinion in the following ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... an evidence of this inherent feeling of a natural right that both public opinion and the law hold that it is a much less serious crime to smuggle than to steal. There are a dozen people who would smuggle, if tempted to do so, to one who would steal. Another illustration is the opposition shown to sumptuary ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... changed, but travelling south we missed the bright-coloured clothes which had always added a touch of beauty to the landscape. We discovered that with the introduction of the Republic, sumptuary laws were being enforced which commanded the exclusive use of earth-coloured garments for the men, and forbade the wearing of silver ornaments to women. Proclamations followed one another in rapid succession, several of which were framed with a view to altering ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers. The costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable thing,—as lasting as ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... difficulty of carrying it into execution. It is easy, we all know, to call spirits from the vasty deep, but exceedingly difficult to induce them to obey the summons. It is easy, and to feminine ingenuity rather pleasant than otherwise, to devise sumptuary laws for the kitchen. But it is quite another thing to try to enforce them. By what coercive machinery is Betsy Jane to be forced into the detested uniform? We know how deeply the Anglo-Saxon mind resents any social "ticketing." Does a "Clergyman's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... silver buttons, and ringing with silver bells. The fine gentlemen of the period were not behind them in extravagance; and the priests were peculiarly luxurious in dress, wearing gay silken robes, with cowls of fur, and girdles of gold and silver. Sumptuary laws were vainly passed to repress the general license, and fortunes were wasted, and wealthy families reduced to beggary. [Footnote: Galliciolli, Memorie Venete.] At this time, when so many worthy gentlemen ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... "rights" and as many "wrongs" as there are individuals; and to be happy in our own way, instead of somebody else's, is one of the first laws of nature, health, and virtue. Many an ancient restriction on personal vitality is going the way of the old sumptuary laws. We have all of us amusing memories of those severe old housekeepers who for no inclemency of the weather would allow a fire in the grate before the first of October, and who regarded a fire before that date as a positive breach of the moral law. Such old wives ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws, they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... had Sumptuary Laws, each man and woman being compelled to dress according to his Degree, and the Better sort only being licensed to wear Rich suits of clothes. And, to my thinking (though the Putting it in Practice might prove somewhat inconvenient), ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... blue coat with gold buttons, white waistcoat, fashionable tight drab pantaloons, white silk stockings and dress shoes, all worn but once, a few days before, at a dress concert, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern." He proceeds to express his indignation at the idea of the manager presuming to enact sumptuary laws without the intervention of the Legislature, and adds threats of legal proceedings and an appeal to a British jury. "I have mixed," he continues, "too much in genteel society not to know that black breeches, or pantaloons, with black ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is rather awkward for you—is it not—that our sumptuary laws forbid you merchants to ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... terrible a Remedy, as a deadly Sickness is a Reformer; and I had rather hope that sumptuary Laws against Dress, Racing, Gaming, &c. if we were Wise enough to make them, and amendable enough to mind them when made, wou'd do our Business much better. 'Tis a Misfortune for Ireland, that our Spendthrifts ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... appears, very good; and that there should be introduced into Italy from Greece the delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars); allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for the days of the Kalends, the Ides, and the Nones; and one thousand sesterces (fifty dollars) ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... B.C.). The settlement of the land question with respect to Ager Publicus in Italy (B.C. III). Limitations on the power of the nobility; the Equestrian courts; trials of Scaevola (B.C. 120) and Cato (B.C. 113). Consulship of Scaurus (B.C. 115); law concerning the voting power of freedmen. Sumptuary law; activity of the censors Metellus and Domitius (B.C. 115). Triumphs of Domitius, Fabius (B.C. 120) and Scaurus (B.C. 115), for military successes. Confidence of the electors in the ancient houses. Recognition of talent by ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... fittings curiously wrought, and all that bravery of pomp so dear to the Venetian heart, which calls forth surly decrees from those stern Signori of the Council—the much unloved "Provveditori alle Pompe," the sumptuary officers ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate private habits and manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral authority when they cannot be actually enforced, and may have been regarded, even ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... 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, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... on what are called "sumptuary laws"; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of the individual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternal government. That, once admitted and established, becomes in ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... stipends and tributes, have been already explained; parricide and murder were in latter ages punished with death; homicide and rape by eric or fine. There were, besides, the laws of gavelkind or division of property among the members of the clan; laws relating to boundaries; sumptuary laws regulating the dress of the various castes into which society was divided; laws relating to the planting of trees, the trespass of cattle, and billeting of troops. These laws were either written in detail, or consisted of certain acknowledged ancient maxims of which ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... indeed a day of finery, which all my sumptuary edicts could not restrain. How well soever I fancied my lectures against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters, yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery; they still loved laces, ribbons, bugles, and catgut; my wife herself ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the desire of superiority and distinction; despotism draws its vital force from fear; but each of these principles may perish through its corruption or excess. The laws of each country, its criminal and civil codes, its system of education, its sumptuary regulations, its treatment of the relation of the sexes, are intimately connected with the form of government, or rather with the principle which animates ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... this town, and by no woman below the degree of Factors' Wives and Ensigns' Wives, except by such as the Governor shall permit." [502] Another writer in 1754 states: "Some years before our arrival in the country, they (the E. I. Co.) found such sumptuary laws so absolutely necessary, that they gave the strictest orders that none of these young gentlemen should be allowed even to hire a Roundel boy, whose business it is to walk by his master and defend him with his Roundel or umbrella from the heat of the sun. A young fellow of humour, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws have always been inefficient, or efficient only for the purposes of oppression. Public morality has been their pretext—the private gratification of jealousy their aim. In republics they were intended to allay the envy of the poor—in monarchies to flatter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... brothers, William and Frederick, were integral members of the political machine in power. Thus we find that in 1803, William Rhinelander was elected Assessor for the Fifth Ward (a highly important and sumptuary office at that time), while both he and Frederick were, at the same time, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... in halves and quarters, so that when looking at a group it was mere guesswork to match the pair that belonged to one man; women in dresses of one tone, mostly rich and dark, and often heavily embroidered, for no sumptuary laws could effectually limit outward display, and the insolent vanity of an age still almost mediaeval made it natural that the rich should attire themselves as richly as they could, and that the poor should be despised ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... tendency, including sumptuary laws, which suggest the existence of unexpected wealth and luxury, were passed; but such laws were never firmly and regularly enforced. By one rule, which does seem to have been carried out, no poisons were to be imported: Scottish chemical ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the Holland wives of centuries ago took their visitors through their wardrobes and displayed their silk and velvet gowns. And when England passed some sumptuary laws that no one below titled rank should wear silk, the good wives of traders lined theirs with silk and hung them up in grand array to gratify their ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... elbows and frayed trousers, knowing all the while that finished, waiting, was a suit in which one might have made one's mark—had only one shut one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on pay-day. Surely there should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks to deal in cellars or behind ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome |
