The Old Sumptuary Laws.
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THE OLD SUMPTUARY LAWS.
BY GEORGE H. WESTLEY. AVIONG those abuses of our day that make the judicious grieve, are some which might be mended by a renewal of the sump tuary laws of our ancestors. For example there is the too frequent case of the million aire's son who races through his patrimony, duplicating the Rake's Progress en route, tainting whomsoever he touches, presently arriving, a moral, mental, and physical wreck, at some asylum for the insane. Under well ordered sumptuary laws, properly enforced, such a thing could not be. Yet, while a legislative revival of this nature would improve some matters, it would bring with it a long train of clearly foreseen undesirabilities; and so we must needs be con tent with that remnant of the old system which yet remains, namely, the restrictions upon the sale of intoxicating liquors. The sumptuary laws (Latin sinnftns, ex pense) were designed to prevent personal ex travagance. Legislation of this kind dates back to ancient Sparta, where that somewhat mythical character, Lycurgus, is said to have enacted laws tending to the suppression of every desire towards luxurious living. All citizens were compelled to take their meals at a public table, and from this not even the king was exempted. The fare was of the coarsest and plainest description. It was said of the famous " black broth" of Sparta that, if the Spartans had to live upon this, it is no wonder that they were so ready to die. The restrictions were not confined to indul gences of the palate : no foreign luxuries of any kind might be introduced, and all adorn ment of dwellings was prohibited by an in exorable law. Six centuries later, that is, in the third century before Christ, we find sumptuary laws directed against extravagance in dress.
No man should wear a garment of silk "fit only for women," and as for the latter they might not wear a dress of different colors, possess more than half an ounce of gold, nor ride in a carriage in the city or within a mile of it, except on public ceremonies. There is more reason in this legislation concerning wearing apparel than at first ap pears. The ancients believed that clothes exercised a distinct influence over the mind of the wearer. Thus Aristotle tells us that when Cyrus had overcome the Lydians, which were a warlike people, and designed to bring them to a more peaceable life, he changed their apparel and music and, instead of their short warlike coat, clothed them in long garments like women, and in a short time their minds were so mollified and abated that they forgot their former fierceness and became tender and effeminate. " Whereby it appcareth that there is not a little in the garment to the fashioning of the mind and conditions." But, to return to our second last para graph, the man or body of men that under takes to curtail the privileges of women in the matter of finery invites trouble. Such a clamor was made and maintained by the fair sex that in twenty years the obnoxious law was repealed, and probably it had become a dead letter long before. " One of the most difficult things with women," said Bossus, "is to root out their curiosity for clothes and ornaments of the body." The Lex Fannia, 161 B. C., regulated the expense which might be incurred at enter tainments. At certain festivals, one hundred asses might be spent. On ten other days of each month the sum was limited to fifty asses; while for all remaining days ten asses were deemed sufficient. When we learn that our
