Excerpt from Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England The subject throws much light upon the civilization of the times when these laws were in operation, and the treatment here adopted endeavors to exhibit them in the surroundings of contemporary social history. No attempt is made to sharpen legal definitions, for the Middle Ages took it for granted that every government had the right to check extravagance and restrain luxury for the public good (since luxury in individuals was presumed to lead to the corruption of the state and even by weakening it to endanger its national existence). The philosophical discussion of this matter which took place in later times probably hastened the disuse of this. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.