The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-01 00:00:00

SUMPTUARY LAWS AND RIOTS.

An ancient statute which forbids an Englishman
to be served with more than two courses at dinner
or supper is said to be still unrepealed. This statute
—lO Ed. 111 , st. 3—had its origin in a salutary
puapose, perhaps did some good in its time, and
was doubtless evaded by those who wished and were
rich enough to evade it, very much as such a law
would be evaded to-day. The fact is that sump-
tuary laws are of all laws the most inefficacious and
most constantly violated. They are, therefore, in
accordance with a well-established principle, of all
laws the ones to be most carefully avoided, or, if
thought indispensable, to be most delicately and
cautiously applied. More especially with modern
institutions and under representative Governments
is this reserve indicated as needful; since, frame
them as you will, let them be ever so ostensibly
equal in pressure, they will inevitably press lightly
on the rich and heavily on the poor. There can be
no doubt of the theoretical excellence and desira-
bility of many sumptuary laws. Nine out of ten
of us, for example, would be better in a sanitary
point of view if compelled to leave the dinner table
hungry. Most people eat too much, drink too
much, and sleep too much. Nearly all who use
tobacco or other narcotics or stimulants use more
of them than is wholesome. Few take as much
exercise, either physical or intellectual, as they
ought to take. The great majority of mankind
are in sober truth mere grown-up children, and
would be better off in some respects for gentle but
regular coercion in all personal habits and dis-
cipline. The objection, however, to applying this
coercion is that its subjects, if better off in some
respects would be worse off in more respects. They
would cease to think for themselves, since others
would do all their thinking for them, and their
minds would become weakened and emasculated.
Their notions of right and wrong would become con-
fused as they lost the habit of making selection, they
would cease to have aspirations for virtue, liberty,
and enlightenment ; and, in a word, their progres-
sion would first be arrested and paralysed, and would
then become retrogression. We often see indivi-
duals whom we know would be better for positive
restraiut—dipsomaniacs, for instance, or even in-
dolent, grumbling, self-indulgent women, whom we
feel ought to be driven by main force to bracing
exercise and wholesome labour. But we cannot
make fish of part of the community and flesh of
another ; and the good of individuals, however de-
sirable, cannot be made paramount to the good of
all. This is the manifest objection in brief to
Maine Laws and all similar semi-despotic enact-
ments. We look at a solitary drunkard and think
that law a good thing ; we look at the whole com-
inanity and we know it to be a bad thing. The
solution of the mystery is not difficult. In Paris
public opinion is so strong that not even an em-
peror, in most things, can go against it. In New
York public opinion is so weak that even a wretched
rabble, in most things, can safely defy it. Call the
systems what we like, these are the fruits. Where
a given progress of civilisation is, names amount to
very little ; where it is not, they may amount to
much. The French submit to the name of abso-
lutism because they find themselves by experience
very comfortable under it. We of New York sub-
mit to the reality of absolutism—and that of the
very worst sort—because we foolishly imagine that
we secure, and can only secure, by such a submis-
sion the august and sacred presence of Liberty.