Having gone so far, overruled by the necessities of the
public service, in breaking down those legal barriers by which a peculiar
dress, furniture, equipage, &c., were appropriated to the imperial house,
as distinguished from the very highest of the noble houses, Marcus had a
sufficient pretext for extending indefinitely the effect of the
dispensation then granted. Articles purchased at the auction bore no
characteristic marks to distinguish them from others of the same form and
texture: so that a license to use any one article of the _sacred_ pattern,
became necessarily a general license for all others which resembled them.
And thus, without abrogating the prejudices which protected the imperial
precedency, a body of sumptuary laws--the most ruinous to the progress of
manufacturing skill, [Footnote: Because the most effectual extinguishers
of all ambition applied in that direction; since the very excellence of
any particular fabric was the surest pledge of its virtual suppression by
means of its legal restriction (which followed inevitably) to the use of
the imperial house.] which has ever been devised--were silently suspended.
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