"Sumptuary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Apparently 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 Prohibition. I began to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... they 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), we should be much better off in England if some such laws ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 of effect, by inspiring moderation, or a sense of equality, and by stifling ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... interesting national 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 instincts ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... 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 it should ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... 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 similar character ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... pomoerium was extended to embrace all Italy, and, as is supposed, the northern boundary of Roman territory was extended to the Rubicon. New courts were established and the judicial system was reorganized; the censors were practically shelved, but sumptuary laws were passed to prevent extravagance and luxury. All of the laws of Sulla were submitted to the people for formal approval; but as no one was hardy enough to differ from the dictator, it mattered little what ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... 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
... certainties while parading a hundred of his own, and with these some which were but pretences; and his pet doctrine of daimonic fortune is not ostensibly favourable to social science; but in the concrete, he is more of a seeker after rational law than any humanist of his day. In discussing sumptuary laws, he anticipates the economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as in discussing ecclesiastical law he anticipates the age of tolerance; in discussing criminal law, the work of Beccaria; in discussing a priori science, the protest of Bacon; and in discussing education, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... be a greater number of approachable-irreproachable young girls in 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, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... done, and with so much fertility and 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 regulations of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forthcoming 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 musicians, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... 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 ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... 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 ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scarecrow he abhors, and will follow such an one through six streets to express his disapprobation. Extremes of size? whether of tallness or shortness? offend him equally. Whitman was not kinder to "the average man." Nor is the small boy's influence limited to sumptuary and corporeal censorship: by taking up certain songs he "makes" the nation's ballads, and every one knows what that means. Let me train a nation's small boys, I care not who makes its laws. O small boy, true sovereign ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the age of twelve were not allowed outside the house, and were seen only by their relations and by ecclesiastics; and, of course, marriages were arranged by the parents. In the theatre, only noble women and those of the citizen class were admitted. The sumptuary laws were strict. Nobles and public officials above eighteen were obliged to wear a large loose robe and black hose. It is recorded that a certain Tuberone Cerva came into the Senate one day with a robe longer than the prescribed measure, and it was cut short then and there, which ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... 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 ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... devalue, revalue. [vary the amount of 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[obs3]; sterling; nummary[obs3]. 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 [German: money rules the world], money makes the world go round; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "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 ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... their leader seems to have made all other points subordinate to this. There is hardly any point in which the action of the individual American has been freed from governmental restraints, from ecclesiastical government, from sumptuary laws, from restrictions on suffrage, from restrictions on commerce, production, and exchange, for which he is not indebted in some measure to the work and teaching of Jefferson between the years of 1790 and 1800. He and his party ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... 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
... individual desires and 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
... 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
... materials for the dress of either sex; while the very housings of the horses sparkled with brilliants and cost immense sums. This absurd extravagance was carried so far that Charles V. found himself forced at length to proclaim sumptuary laws for its repression. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... only a burthen and charge to the parish. The true way of multiplying mankind to public advantage, in such a country as England, is to invite from abroad only able handicraftsmen and artificers, or such who bring over a sufficient share of property to secure them from want; to enact and enforce sumptuary laws against luxury, and all excesses in clothing, furniture, and the like; to encourage matrimony, and reward, as the Romans did, those who have a certain number of children. Whether bringing over ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... with those who describe the Yankee as a naturally cold-blooded, selfish being. From both the creed and the sumptuary regulations of the rigid moral censors from whom they sprung, they have inherited the practice of a close self-observance and a strict attention to conventional form, which gives a frigid restraint to their air that nevertheless does not ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... as 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 so often run out their ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... proceeded to 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 in his character ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... prescribed by the East becomes a duty, a 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Genoa, 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 ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and their tongues and played into the hands of their opponents. They advocated no great reforms and showed little political vision. They clung to the time-honored doctrines of the Democratic party—tariff for revenue only, opposition to sumptuary laws, economy in expenditures, and abolition of the internal revenue taxes—and they made ponderous speeches upon the Constitution, "viewing with alarm" the encroachments of the Federal Government upon the sphere of action ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... so close as to display the person—a habit forbidden by the sumptuary laws of the canton—nor so loose as to be an encumbrance in walking or climbing, covered a close tunic of a different colour, and came down beneath the middle of the leg, but suffered the ancle, in all its fine proportions, to be completely visible. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... ancients was at times successfully curbed by sumptuary laws, cropping out at fairly regular intervals. These laws, usually given under the pretext of safeguarding the morals of the people and accompanied by similar euphonious phrases were, like modern prohibitions, vicious and virulent effusions ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... now a necessary for the middling class, 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of the metropolis. His eye, no longer loaded by the bloodshot 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 ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 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 and this sketch ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Their sumptuary laws, at first sight, may appear severe towards the fair sex, who are not permitted to eat butchermeat, nor to eat at all, in the presence of their husbands. It certainly does not convey the most delicate ideas, to a mind impressed with much sensibility, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... consul Scipio dies, and C. Valerius Laevinus takes his place for the rest of the year. His colleague Petilius is slain in battle against the Ligurians. The Orchian and other sumptuary laws fail to repress the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • 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
... to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three 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, bedless, breadless; why, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... authority of law? The statistics of our criminal courts show in recent years an unprecedented growth in crimes. Thus, in the federal courts, pending criminal indictments have increased from 9503 in the year 1912 to over 70,000 in the year 1921. While this abnormal increase is, in part, due to sumptuary legislation—for approximately 30,000 cases now pending arise under the prohibition statutes—yet, eliminating these, there yet remains an increase in nine years of over 400 per cent, in the comparatively narrow sphere ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Gr. {Greek letters}. Christians and Jews were compelled by the fanatical sumptuary laws of the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (AD. 856) to wear a broad leather belt in public, hence it became a badge of the Faith. Probably it was confounded with the "Janeo" (Brahmanical thread) and the Parsi sacred ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 by an inequality in the distribution of wealth which does not necessarily ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 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 as she appeared, the air resounded with ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... 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 distinctive suit for fishing is ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... in the same manner, at home; but the convoi, or passage from 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 orders, the Capucins particularly, are in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... 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 and ladies had need of the Uncle to whom hard-pressed ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the sight of you scarce knew what, either before them or 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 ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... lives by the stimulus of honour, 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 ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... of importance is attached to these sumptuary questions by the reigning families of Europe. On one occasion an imperial meeting between the kaiser and the late czar was delayed for three whole days, while government stocks all over the world declined in value, and the utmost apprehension prevailed on the score of peace, merely because the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... 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 ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... 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 the nobility; career of Scaurus (B.C. ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of "values." It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side of life: the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two ingredients so essential ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the 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
... 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 expenses ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... appetite for expensive pleasures; and the popular diffusion of luxury in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is attested by the fashionable invective of the satirist, and by the impotence of repeated sumptuary enactments. [44] Much of this superfluous wealth, however, was expended on the construction of useful public works. Cities, from which the nobles had once been so jealously excluded, came now to be their favorite residence. [45] But, while their sumptuous edifices and splendid retinues ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... rise in the price of necessaries would imperil the labourer's ability to bring up his family. But what seemed new to Dupont was that Smith now in his book held that if the commodities taxed were luxuries, the tax would not act in that way. It would act as a sumptuary law. The labourer would merely spend less on such superfluities, and since this forced frugality would probably increase rather than diminish his ability to bring up a family, he would neither require nor obtain any rise of wages. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... the 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, who, guided by the apophthegms of Democritus, agreed ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... had 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 ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 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 ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... such as costume and customs, we find Government does not disdain to occupy itself in the regulation of the former, by making stringent sumptuary laws, and effectually securing their observance by heavy fines. The gentlemen dress in the Blue-Coat style, occasionally varying it by a short tunic-like coat instead of the long gown, and surmounting it by a low flat cap, which the nobles ornament by an ostrich feather. The ladies ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... awake for all day, and was colloguing with Frisbie about the carrying out of the sumptuary order for the forcible camp-cleaning, when Penfield came with the request that the chief report at once to the president ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... performers. In these latter reforms, which simply restrained the exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to the public pleasures, and unprofitable to the state, Marcus may have had no farther view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary laws. But in the restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to believe that his highest purpose was not that of elevating human nature, and preparing the way for still higher regulations. As little can it be believed ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... classes. The severe and frugal morals of the Republic still survived in great families, as well as among that middle class, from which the Empire drew its solid support; but in fashionable society there was a marked and rapid relaxation of morals which was vainly combated by stringent social and sumptuary legislation. The part taken by women in social and political life is among the most powerful factors in determining the general aspect of an age. This, which had already been great under the later Republic, was now greater ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the fact that from the close of the seventh century much official attention seems to have been bestowed on the subject of costume. Thus, during the last five years of the Emperor Temmu's reign—namely, from 681—we find no less than nine sumptuary regulations issued. The first was an edict, containing ninety-two articles, of which the prologue alone survives, "The costumes of all, from the princes of the Blood down to the common people, and the wearing of gold ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to a virtue. It is true that thrift was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, sumptuary laws being enforced in many ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... Assuredly no sumptuary laws were needed to restrain such revels as these. "On another occasion, in consequence of the additional fatigues of the day, I allowed some pieces of fat to be fried with our meat." Horrible gluttony! After they had been some months out, an extraordinary desire for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... there were 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 price ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... (21) Sumptuary laws. Extravagance at weddings (Telfy), and at funerals (Telfy) was forbidden at Athens and also in the ...
— Laws • Plato
... when distinctions and divisions were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the consequence? That your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular to look precisely like a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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
... 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 ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... reenforcements have been sent thither to end the the Chinese, whom he views with some suspicion. The Japanese trade requires regulation, especially that in deerskins, which threatens to destroy the game. The sale of provisions especially should be under government supervision. Sumptuary laws and the prevention of gambling are required. Negroes should be kept out. Building houses with wood should be prevented. The streets need repairs. The officials take much advantage of their position, and especially favor their dependents unduly. Military commissions are given ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws, they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I have ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... having a strong or commanding influence in the background. But the Rhinelander 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 ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... card calling the Cincinnati result "the alliance of 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... superfinest texture, of deeply meditated cut; with Malines-lace cuffs; quilted with gold; so that a man can carry, without difficulty, an estate of land on his back? Keineswegs, By no manner of means! The Sumptuary Laws have fallen into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. Our fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and drayman's doublet. The cloth of it is studiously coarse; the colour a speckled soot-black or rust-brown gray; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... attracted the attention of observers. Princes have made sumptuary laws, religion has moralized for gourmandise, but, alas, a mouthfull less was never eaten, and the best of eating every day ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... communities. On the small coral 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 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Against Civil 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 Secular Crimes; Earliest Duties on Imports; ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 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 satirists. Let us return for an instant, in conclusion, to that famous ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... here find a beach unspoiled by goat-carriages or black-faced minstrels, a tiny parade uninvaded by stucco terraces or German brass bands, and an ancient stone pier off which swimmers may take a header direct, in the early morning, before the sumptuary edicts of his worship the Mayor compel them to resort to the use of bathing-machines and the decent covering of an approved costume, between the hours of eight and eight. A board beside the mouth of the harbour, signed by a Secretary of State to his late Majesty King William ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... New taxes, sumptuary taxes, vestiary taxes; nemo audeat comedere praeter duo fercula cum potagio; tax on the living, tax on the dead, tax on successions, tax on carriages, tax on paper. "Bravo!" shouts the beadle party, "fewer books; tax ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... the pleasurable anticipations 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... most 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 ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... which 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 ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... 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 consented, would ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... 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. His last instructions to the new officials, on proceeding to their posts, were to "take particular care of the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... you mean," said my friend, a little impatiently. "You mean sumptuary legislation. But I have not come to talk to you upon that subject, for then you would probably want to do all the talking yourself. I want to ask you if you have visited any of the cheaper amusements of this metropolis, or know anything of the really clever and charming things ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 they are ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the Council of state, the Parliament. Public finance. Maintenance of Order. Sumptuary laws and "blue ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Mason-Slidell Incident. Mr. Benjamin's Foreign Policy. DeLeon's Captured Despatches. Murmurs Loud and Deep. England's Attitude. Other Great Powers. Mr. Davis' View. "If". Interest of the Powers. The Optimist View. Production and Speculation. Blockade Companies. Sumptuary Laws. Growth of Evil Power. Charleston and Savannah. Running the Fleet at Wilmington. Demoralization and Disgust. The Mississippi Closed. Vicksburg. "Running the Bloc." on the Border. The ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... considerably less importance, include Tyrannus or the Mode, in a Discourse of Sumptuary Laws (1661); A Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern (1664), and An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, Demonstrated from the Principles of Art (1668), both translated from the French of Roland Freart; Another Part of the Mystery of Jesuitisim, also from ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... is anything more than a bit of sentimental cant, it is to have a legal effect. It is to alter the status of the non-Christian citizen before the law. It is to affect the legal oaths and instruments, the matrimonial contracts, the sumptuary laws, &c., &c., of the country. This would be an outrage ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... Dashall, "that they will not at any future period be reduced to the lamentable necessity of restraining the progress of epicurism, as in the year 1543, when the Lord Mayor and Common Council enacted a sumptuary law to prevent luxurious eating; by which it was ordered, that the Mayor should confine himself to seven, Aldermen and Sheriffs to six, and the Sword-bearer to four dishes at dinner or supper, under the penalty of forty shillings for each ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... mounted the litter, and once more the bearers, with their heads beneath the pole, bore us on at their accustomed swinging trot. Phorenice was telling me about her new supplies of gold. She had made fresh sumptuary laws, it appeared. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... 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 as ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the Augury of Public 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 and given special privileges. The wisdom and prudence of Augustus ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... in the year 1500, he gave here the mayor's feast, which before had usually been done in Grocers' Hall. None of these bills of fare (says Pennant) have reached me; but doubtless they were very magnificent. They at length grew to such excess, that in the time of Queen Mary a sumptuary law was made to restrain the expense both of provisions and liveries; but I suspect, (says Pennant,) as it lessened the honour of the city, it was not long observed, for in 1554, the city thought proper to renew the order ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... some Japanese 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 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 of pot-herb so as to make them the most ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... said 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Status of Women.—The Roman women gave themselves with energy to the religions and the luxury of the East. They flocked in crowds to the Bacchanals and the mysteries of Isis. Sumptuary laws were made against their fine garments, their litters, and their jewels, but these laws had to be abrogated and the women allowed to follow the example of the men. Noble women ceased to walk or to remain in their homes; they set out with great equipages, frequented ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... were as follows: No woman should have in her dress above half an ounce of gold, nor wear a garment of different colors, nor ride in a carriage in the city or in any town, or within a mile of it, unless upon occasion of a public sacrifice. This sumptuary law was passed during the public distress consequent upon Hannibal's invasion of Italy. It was repealed eighteen years afterward, upon petition of the Roman ladies, though strenuously opposed by Cato (Livy 34, 1; Tacitus, Annales, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... expensive and unfortunate piece of finery was every bit as ugly, if not more so, than the plain black or invisible-green cloth coat of this age. The long shoes, pointed toes, and other grotesque fashions of the middle ages, must all of them have been expensive; and it was by inefficient sumptuary laws that it was attempted to put them down. The draperies which we admire on an Etruscan vase were of the coarsest woollen: and the possession of silken stuffs in abundance has not tended to make the Chinese national dress better than what ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... legitimate powers. In other words, an unconstitutional law is no law. If our Congress, for example, were to pass a bill creating an order of nobility, or an established church, or to change the religion of the land, or to enforce a sumptuary code, it would have no more virtue and be entitled to no more deference than a similar enactment intended to bind the whole country passed by a town council. This we presume will not be denied. God has committed unlimited power ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Bearers, the Minister, the Physician, &c., were frequently given when the family could but ill afford it. White gloves in abundance, burnt wine to the company, &c., &c. This extravagance occasioned the enacting sumptuary laws, which though they check'd did not entirely suppress the complaints till the commencement of the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... advantages. The capitals of the other Continental nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest condition of individual liberty,—class servitude, sumptuary and travel restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... 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 the furniture, the armor, and other items of that strong life of the fifteenth century. A ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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 had grown rosy too, with suppressed reflections on the prize-stature to which her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... rules for the organisation of a model community. The base of it was the absence of 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 or so when they will marry. Marriage is to be dissoluble ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Sumptuary laws of the most stringent nature were passed, some of which appear very singular. At a marriage or other domestic festival, officers of justice might offer their guests six measures of beer, tradesmen must not give more than four, peasants only two. Playing for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... (i., 134) finds a date for the book in this passage. The Soldan of Egypt, Mohammed ibn Kala'un, in the early eighth century (Hijrah our fourteenth), issued a sumptuary law compelling Christians and Jews to wear indigo-blue and saffron-yellow turbans, the white being reserved for Moslems. But the custom was much older and Mandeville (chaps. ix.) describes it in A. D. 1322 when it had become the rule. And it still endures; although ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Sumptuary Laws. One of the earliest instances occurs, 1530, in the interlude of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 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 ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... of drinking coffee under a penalty, and the encouragement given to public distilleries, tend to impoverish the poor, who are not affected by the sumptuary laws; for the regent has lately laid very severe restraints on the articles of dress, which the middling class of people found grievous, because it obliged them to throw aside finery that might have lasted them for ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Hal's grave discourse, went I over to Anstace, whom I found mighty busied of more lighter matter,—to wit, the sumptuary laws of late set forth against long cloaks and wide ruffs, which do ill please her, for Anstace loveth to ruffle it of a good ruff. Thence gat she to their Cicely, which is but ill at ease, and Dr Bell was fetched to her this last even: who saith that on Friday and Saturday ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... observance of the scriptural letter and the usages of the Hebrews; and thus, as they named their children Habakkuk and Zerubbabel, and their chapels Zion and Ebenezer, they decorated their persons with blue ribbons because the following sumptuary precept was given in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... keep up the palaces, parks, and studs, when he has taken away the retinues of servants? If he does not take care, he will find himself wielding the bosom of sumptuary reform in the most sweeping manner before he is aware of it. But let me respectfully ask him, who can he suppose objects to any expenditure except on the ground that it is directly and indirectly bad; bad for all parties, noxious to the voluptuary himself, noxious to all about him, and noxious to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... 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 Massachusetts General Court passed restricting sumptuary laws. These laws forbade the purchase of woollen, silk, or linen garments, with silver, gold, silk, or thread lace on them. Two years later a narrow binding of lace was permitted on linen garments. The colonists were ordered not to make or buy any slashed clothes, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle |
