SUMPTUARY LAWS (Lat. sumtus, expense), laws passed to prevent extravagance in banquets, dress, and private expenditure. They abound in ancient legislation. The Locrian legislator, Zaleucus, 450 B.C., ordained that no woman should appear in the streets attended by more than one maid-servant, unless she were drunk, or wear gold or embroidered apparel, unless she designed to act unchastely. At an early period in Roman history, the censors, to whom was intrusted the superintendence of public and private morality, punished with the notatio rev...writ:, all persons guilty of luxurious liv ing; but as the love of luxury grew with the increase of wealth and foreign conquest, various legislative enactments were passed with the object of restraining it. The lex Orchia, 161 B.c., limited the number of guests to be present at a feast; the lex Fannie, 161 B.C., regulated the cost of entertainments, enacting that the utmost sum which should be expended on certain festivals was to be100 asses, 30 asses on certain other festi vals, and 10 asses on an ordinary entertainment, where also no other fowl than one hen was permitted to be served up, and that not fattened for the purpose. There were also the lex Didia, Lucretia, Cornelia, 2:Emilia, Autia, Julia, and others, most of them passed in consequence of the practical disregard of the similar laws that had preceded them; but they all seem to have been habitually transgressed in the later times of the republic.
Sumptuary laws were in great favor in the legislation of England from the time of Edward III. down to the reformation. Statute 10 Edward III., c. 3, narrates that "through the excessive and over-many costly meats which the people of this realm have used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened; for the great men by these excesses have been sore grieved, and the lesser people, who only endeavor to imitate the great ones in such sorts of meat, are much impoverished, *hereby they are not able to aid themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought, and many other evils have happened as well to their souls as their bodies;" and enacts that no man, of whatever condition or estate, shall be allowed more than two courses at dinner or sup per, or more than two kinds of food in each course, except on the principal festivals of the year, when three courses at the utmost are to he allowed. All who did not enjoy a
free estate of £100 per annum were prohibited from wearing furs, skins, or silk, and the use of foreign cloth was allowed to the royal family alone. Act 37 Edward III. declares that the outrageous and excessive apparel of divers people against their estate and degree is the destruction and impoverishment of the land, and prescribes the apparel of the various classes into which it distributes the people; it goes no higher than knights, but there are minute regulations for the clothing of women and children. This statute, however, was repealed the next year In France there were sumptuary laws as old as Charlemagne, prohibiting or taxing the use of furs; but the first extensive attempt to restrict extravagance in dress was under Philip IV. By an edict of Charles VI. no one was allowed to exceed a soup and two dishes at dinner. Sumptuary laws continued to be introduced in England in the 16th, and in France as late as the 17th century. Scot land had also a similar class of statutes. The Scottish parliament attempted to regulate the dress of the ladies, to save the purses of the " puir gentlemen, their husbands and fathers." There was a prohibition against their coming to kirk or market with the face muffled in a veil; and statutes were passed against superfluous banqueting, and the inordinate use of foreign spices " brocht from the paints beyond sea, and sauld at dear prices to monie folk that are very unabill to sustain that coaste." Neither in England, Scotland, nor France do these laws appear to have been practically observed to any great extent; in fact, the kings of France and England contributed far more, by their _ — • love of pageantry, to excite a taste for luxury among their subjects than by their ordi nances to repress it. Mr. Froude suggests that such statutes may have been regarded, at the time when they were issued, rather: as authoritative declarations of what wise and good men considered right, than as laws to which obedience could be enforced. Enact ments of this kind have long been considered to be opposed to the principles of political economy. Most of the English sumptuary laws were repealed by 1 James I., c. 25, but a few remained on the statute-book as late as 1856.