Luxury is always proportionate to the inequality of fortunes. If wealth is equally shared within a state, there will be no luxury, for it is based solely on the conveniences which one affords oneself through the work of others.
For wealth to remain equally shared, the law must allot to (…)
We have said that in republics, where the wealth is equally shared, there can be no luxury ; and as this equality of distribution constitutes the excellence of a republic, it follows that the less luxury there is in a republic, the more it approaches perfection. There was no luxury among the (…)
Ill-constituted aristocracy has the misfortune that the nobles have the wealth and yet must not spend ; luxury, opposed to the spirit of moderation, must be banned from it. Therefore there are only very poor people, who cannot receive, and very wealthy ones, who cannot spend.
In Venice, the (…)
“The Suiones, a Germanic nation, give honor to wealth,” says Tacitus, “for which reason they live under the government of one man alone.” What that means is that luxury is singularly proper to monarchies, and that in them there should be no sumptuary laws.
As wealth is, by the constitution of (…)
It was in the spirit of the republic, or in some particular instances, that sumptuary laws were passed in Aragon in the mid-thirteenth century. James I decreed that neither the king nor any of his subjects could eat more than two kinds of meat at each meal, and that each would be prepared in one (…)
Particular reasons call for sumptuary laws in some states. Population by the force of climate can become too great, and at the same time the means of sustaining it can be so uncertain that it is well to put everyone to work cultivating the land. In such states, luxury is dangerous, and sumptuary (…)
We see in the history of China that she has had twenty-two dynasties which have succeeded one another, which is to say she has experienced twenty-two general transformations, not counting innumerable local ones. The first three dynasties were of rather long duration, because they were wisely (…)
There are so many imperfections attached to the loss of virtue in women, their entire soul is so degraded by it, and this principal point lost makes so many others fall, that in a popular state we can regard public dissoluteness as the worst of misfortunes and the certainty of a change in the (…)
Women show little discretion in monarchies because, the distinction of ranks calling them to the court, they go there and adopt the spirit of freedom which is the only one allowed. Everyone uses their charms and passions to advance his fortune ; and as their weakness allows them not pride but (…)
The Romans did not have, like the Greeks, specific magistrates with oversight of the conduct of women. Censors supervised them only as they did the rest of the republic. The institution of the domestic court took the place of the magistracy established for the Greeks.
The husband assembled his (…)
Montesquieu
Unité Mixte de Recherche 5317, CNRS