Sumptuary laws may, in some governments, be necessary for particular
reasons. The people, by the influence of the climate, may grow so
numerous, and the means of subsisting may be so uncertain, as to render
a universal application to agriculture extremely necessary. As luxury in
those countries is dangerous, their sumptuary laws should be very
severe. In order, therefore, to be able to judge whether luxury ought to
be encouraged or proscribed, we should examine first what relation there
is between the number of people and the facility they have of procuring
subsistence. In England the soil produces more grain than is necessary
for the maintenance of such as cultivate the land, and of those who are
employed in the woollen manufactures. This country may be therefore
allowed to have some trifling arts, and consequently luxury. In France,
likewise, there is corn enough for the support of the husbandman and of
the manufacturer. Besides, a foreign trade may bring in so many
necessaries in return for toys that there is no danger to be apprehended
from luxury.
On the contrary, in China, the women are so prolific, and the huma.n
species multiplies so fast, that the lands, though never so much
cultivated, are scarcely sufficient to support the inhabitants. Here,
therefore, luxury is pernicious, and the spirit of industry and economy
is as requisite as in any republic.
[14]
They are obliged to pursue the necessary arts, and to shun those ot luxury and
pleasure.
This is the spirit of the excellent decrees of the Chinese emperors.
"Our ancestors," says an emperor of the family of the Tangs
[15]
"held it as a maxim that if there was a man who did not work, or a woman that was
idle, somebody must suffer cold or hunger in the empire." And on this
principle he ordered a vast number of the monasteries of Bonzes to be
destroyed.
The third emperor of the one-and-twentieth dynasty,
[16]
to whom some precious stones were brought that had been found in a mine, ordered it
to be shut up, not choosing to fatigue his people with working for a
thing that could neither feed nor clothe them.
"So great is our luxury," says Kiayventi,
[17]
"that people adorn with embroidery the shoes of boys and girls, whom they are obliged to
sell." Is employing so many people in making clothes for one person the
way to prevent a great many from wanting clothes? There are ten men who
eat the fruits of the earth to one employed in agriculture; and is this
the means of preserving numbers from wanting nourishment?
