of that unavoidable evil in society--great inequality of fortune!
Political economists therefore tell us that any regulations would be
ridiculous which, as Lord Bacon expresses it, should serve for "the
repressing of waste and excess by _sumptuary laws_." Adam Smith is not
only indignant at "sumptuary laws," but asserts, with a democratic
insolence of style, that "it is the highest impertinence and presumption
in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private
people, and to restrain their expense by sumptuary laws. They are
themselves always the greatest spendthrifts in the society; let them
look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private
people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state,
that of their subjects never will." We must therefore infer that
governments by extravagance may ruin a state, but that individuals enjoy
the remarkable privilege of ruining themselves without injuring society!
Adam Smith afterwards distinguishes two sorts of luxury: the one
exhausting itself in "durable commodities, as in buildings, furniture,
books, statues, pictures," will increase "the opulence of a nation;" but
of the other, wasting itself in dress and equipages, in frivolous
ornaments, jewels, baubles, trinkets, &c., he acknowledges "no trace or
vestige would remain; and the effects of ten or twenty years' profusion
would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed." There
is, therefore, a greater and a lesser evil in this important subject of
the opulent, unrestricted by any law, ruining his whole generation.

Where "the wealth of nations" is made the solitary standard of their
prosperity, it becomes a fertile source of errors in the science of
morals; and the happiness of the individual is then too frequently
sacrificed to what is called the prosperity of the state. If an
individual, in the pride of luxury and selfism, annihilates the fortunes
of his whole generation, untouched by the laws as a criminal, he leaves
behind him a race of the discontented and the seditious, who, having
sunk in the scale of society, have to reascend from their degradation by
industry and by humiliation; but for the work of industry their habits
have made them inexpert; and to humiliation their very rank presents a
perpetual obstacle.

Sumptuary laws, so often enacted and so often repealed, and always
eluded, were the perpetual, but ineffectual, attempts of all governments
t