Under Louis XV. all sumptuary laws were practically a dead letter.[234-3] Their enforcement is, indeed, exceedingly difficult, as it is always harder to superintend consumption than production. The latter is carried on in definite localities, not unfrequently even in the open air. The former is carried on in the secrecy of a thousand homes. Besides, sumptuary laws have very often the effect to make the forbidden fruit all the sweeter. Where they are based on a difference of class, not only the passion for pleasure, but the vanity of the lower classes is an incentive to their violation.[234-4] Spite of the severity of the penalties attached to the violation of these laws, of redoubled measures of control, which are dreadful burdens on the intercourse between man and man,[234-5] the French government has been compelled to admit, after almost every internal commotion, and almost every external war, that its sumptuary laws fell into disuse. [Footnote 234-1: Ordonnances de France, I, 324, 531. Worms law of 1220. (_Riehl_, Pfälzer, 246.) Braunschweig law of 1228, that at weddings there should not be over 12 plates nor more than three musicians. (_Rehtmeyer_, Chron., 466.) Danish sumptuary law of 1269. First law regulating dress in Prussia in 1269. (_Voigt_, Gesch. von Preussen, V, 97.) On Henry II., see _v. Raumer_, Hohenstaufen, VI, 585. Some of the earlier restrictions on luxury, such as that of 190 in England and France, against scarlet ermine, etc., may have been related to the religious fervor of the crusades. _St. Louis_, during the whole period of his crusades wore no articles of luxury.] [Footnote 234-2: The English prohibition against the wearing of silk on hats, caps, stockings etc. (1 and 2 Phil. and Mary, ch. 2.) was promulgated with the intention of promoting the home manufacture of wool. And so _Sully_, Economics, L, XII, XVI, was in favor of laws regulating outlay mainly from "mercantilistic" reasons, that the country might not be impoverished by the purchase of foreign expensive articles. The police ordinance of the Empire of 1548, tit. 9, desired to guard against both the "excessive" exportation of money and the obliteration of class differences; that of 1530, tit. 9, and the Austrian police ordinance of Ferdinand I. had only the second object in view. (_Mailath_, Gesch., von Oesterreich, II, 169 ff.) How, in Denmark, prohibitions of luxury grew very soon into prohibitions of imports with a protective intention, see in _Thaarup_, Dänische Statistik, I, 521 seq. On the mercantilistic object of the greater number of prohibitions of coffee, in the 18th century, see _Dohm_, über Kaffeegesetzgebung, in the D. Museum, Bd., II, St. 8, No. 4.]