Cesare Marchese di Beccaria begins his Dei delitti e delle pene (Of Crimes and Punishments) with the observation ‘it has never been possible to condense them [laws] to a code specific to the activities of a multitude of men, and consider them from the point of view of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’Footnote ¹ The source of this expression, written in Italian by Beccaria as ‘la massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero’, is still debated.Footnote ² It is probable that Jeremy Bentham came across the expression in the English version of Beccaria's Of Crimes and Punishments, a work that we know he greatly admired.Footnote ³ Bentham would adopt the idea as a cornerstone of his utilitarian philosophy and utilize the identical expression in several of his works.Footnote ⁴

Bentham praised Beccaria for the rational approach that he brings to his work. ‘You who speak reason . . . you have made so many useful excursions into the path of utility, what is there left for us to do? – Never to turn aside from that path.’Footnote ⁵ He also acknowledged, in correspondence with Voltaire, the usefulness of Beccaria's writings on the principles of utility: ‘Beccaria has been lucerna pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis.’Footnote ⁶ This tribute to Beccaria is similar to a line in the Holy Bible, Psalm 118 (27), and translates literally as: a lamp to my feet and hands, or he has lighted my way and explained the mysterious.

The spirit of English utilitarianism, its belief that one can create a science of morals, is present in Beccaria's work. One need not only rely on the subjective, but also move to utilizing the universal experience of pain and pleasure. A system of laws and punishments that promotes the general interest could be devised with some precision if the foundation were self-interest. He also followed a similar key element of utilitarianism, the consequentialist principle, in his analysis to determine whether luxury is desirable or nefarious. According to this principle, the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the goodness or badness of the results that flow from it.Footnote ⁷

Section I of this article examines Beccaria's belief that in a country with a population reproducing at a rate greater than its land area is increasing, there would be good government and luxury would result in net economic benefits. The middle class becomes more prosperous and powerful and the numerous poor are assured their subsistence because of the production and consumption of luxury. The effect of luxury flowed in a chain reaction from the upper class that largely squandered its income on luxury of ostentation, through the middle class that put luxury of comfort to work for all classes, to the lowest class that seldom could afford luxury goods. The upper class set an example for enjoyment of luxury that other classes would emulate. There were exceptions, such as the dowry, to the desirability of expenditure on luxury. Beccaria was attentive to a just distribution of income, but was aware that equal distribution is as destructive to good economy as too great a disproportion: luxury's influence on motivation is crucial. Beccaria was familiar with physiocratic theory and agreed with some of its tenets, for example, that large-scale farms could be more productive per unit of investment input. On the other hand, he wrote that wealthy entrepreneurs often lacked sufficient incentive to produce at maximum. An industry of many motivated middle-sized enterprises would have greater total output.

Section II considers Beccaria's view of luxury in more detail, showing that he was both a political and economic liberal. Bentham's position regarding the distributive aspect of utility theory is still being established, although as we have seen in the introduction to this article Bentham himself respectfully declared that he was significantly influenced by Beccaria's writing. Some of Beccaria's critics called him a socialist and the Italian Rousseau. I challenge their accuracy by comparing Rousseau's views on luxury to those of Beccaria. Beccaria believed that to maintain a healthy polity and economy, political and economic liberty must not be overly restricted; there must be equality before the law and of economic opportunity. The state must balance a move towards more or less liberty for all against the need to maintain the state's bond of guaranteed security to those who have earned the right to enjoy more distinctions and rewards. The state must balance any move towards equality among individuals by the need to maintain the state's bond of guaranteed security to those who have earned the right to peaceful enjoyment of more distinctions and rewards superior to those of their fellow citizens. He held that an indispensable part of any plan of action by the state aimed at maintaining that successful balance must be the upholding of this greater freedom of choice, the greatest of luxuries, for those who contribute more to society's wellbeing.

I. LUXURY OF OSTENTATION AND LUXURY OF COMFORT

Beccaria followed a broadly utilitarian strategy, perhaps influenced by Hume, when discussing luxury. ‘Hume is at the forefront of the utilitarian strategy, [to consider luxury] . . . because of its effects, as an ingredient in a civilised society.’Footnote ⁸ In a letter to his French translator, the philosophe André Morellet, Beccaria states that he had endless pleasure reading the eighteen volumes of Hume's History. ‘I have seen in it a political thinker, a philosopher and an historian of the first order.’Footnote ⁹ We have no record of Beccaria having read Hume's essay ‘Of Luxury’ and the related essay ‘Of Commerce’.

Hume traced the end of the medieval era in England to the waning power of the barons, and the concomitant appearance under the Tudors of an absolute monarchy. A cause of the decline in the power of the aristocracy during the reign of Henry VII was the change of manners. The nobles dissipated their large fortunes as they competed with each other, not in terms of the number and boldness of their retainers, but in a more civilized fashion. They endeavoured to excel in the splendour and elegance of their equipage, houses and tables. Hume writes that luxury thrives upon the vices and excesses of the rich and leads to the ruin of many noble families. Notwithstanding this, he viewed it in a positive light because of the benefits conferred upon the rest of society. Producers and merchants who provided the luxury products earned a good income, and, ‘the landed proprietors having now a greater demand for money than men, sought to turn their land to the most profitable use’.Footnote ¹⁰ Enclosing their fields or joining small farms into larger ones, they dismissed those now useless hands who formerly had been valuable for military purposes. When luxury destroyed baronial power, it released the gentry from their feudal dependence and enlarged their power and authority. This middle rank of men then came to enjoy conveniences previously only within the reach of the very rich; many became members of the House of Commons. Eventually, a lifestyle of luxury was adopted even by ‘those of slender fortunes, who at that time were often men of family, imitating those of a rank immediately above them, [and some of them, too] reduced themselves to poverty’.Footnote ¹¹ Thus, luxury tended to facilitate consolidation of land in larger estates by those who had managed well, within their financial means, their indulgence on luxuries.

Beccaria describes the positive consequences that flow from the production and enjoyment of luxuries. The expenditures of the wealthy indirectly pay for the necessities purchased by the labouring poor. The rich would not continue to pay for work and the products and services it produces, if they did not receive some gain from them. ‘People decide to make these payments only when they have the opportunity to convert them in ways that provide them with what most satisfies them.’Footnote ¹² Luxury entices the rich to spend their surplus income rather than to save it, and in so doing, to inject more fuel into the economic engine. Luxuries are part of the chain of production, exchange and consumption that link the classes together and make them wealthier and happier. The luxury of fellow citizens who are at a considerable social distance above us creates less of an impression upon us than the luxury of those immediately above or below us. Consequently, individuals from the wealthiest classes who are spending their wealth in order to satisfy their own desire for pleasures and to distinguish themselves from others of their class mostly influence the actions of those in a class directly above or below them. In a chain reaction, ‘once expenditures on luxury of the first classes of citizens have been turned to ways that are advantageous to the economy of the state, all of the classes, by a retrograde movement, will go with the example given’. Expenditures that appeared useless and sterile are in fact made desirable by serving as the example that ‘the upper classes dependent on the monarch’ provide to the other classes.Footnote ¹³

In contrast, ‘the excessive luxury and superfluous pomp with which marriage is celebrated in the upper classes and which is emulated by those in the lower classes’ is often not beneficial. The dowry was a powerful screening device of the traditional family in achieving desirable alliances. However, the search for a perfect dowry had become even more damaging than the celebration of the marriage itself. ‘Dowries become evermore enormous; . . . and people become exhausted with the paying off of the tedious debts.’ Beccaria recognizes marriage as an important economic institution originally intended to offset gender risk and reinforced by the dowry, which also provided a resource available to the bride in case of need in the future. He concludes that ‘a secure income that would cover the increased family expenses and guarantee for the woman, who has fewer resources and less freedom than the man, a secure source of nourishment’ is more desirable from a societal and political standpoint.Footnote ¹⁴ The dowry, probably originating from the basic cost-and-benefit considerations (including risks) that underlie marriage generally, was by Beccaria's time often contributing, instead, to a more dangerous situation, especially for the women and children involved. Because of a desire to present an impression of greater wealth and power than was actually possessed, the payment of a dowry was liable to lead the young married couple to debt beyond their means, and too often abandoned wives and children would become destitute. Beccaria frowns at the dowry, considering that when it involved excessive expenditure the consequences were an exception to the usual social desirability of luxury. He uses the practice of dowry as an illustration of his belief that in some particular cases luxury is socially counter-productive and he recommends restraint and moderation in such an instance.

Beccaria wrote to Morellet: ‘It is he [Claude-Adrien Helvétius] who has strongly directed me on the path of truth and has been the first to arouse my attention to the blindness and unhappiness of humanity.’Footnote ¹⁵ Helvétius argued in his treatise De l'Esprit, which Beccaria had read, that many contributors to the debate on luxury ignored the most important factor in determining whether luxury is beneficial or nefarious. ‘Luxury is not intrinsically harmful, but simply as the effect of a greater disproportion between the riches of citizens.’Footnote ¹⁶ If the wealth of the country is too unequally distributed among its citizens, the comfort of some citizens is at the expense of the rest of the citizenry. With a large number of smaller proprietors, wealth is more dispersed throughout the population and the conditions are created for luxury to be beneficial in terms of stimulating economic production and enhancing the comfort of the majority. In such circumstances, the utilitarian doctrine underpinning Helvétius's account of luxury promotes the general interest.

Economic historians are in agreement that Beccaria closely adhered to physiocratic doctrine in his Elementi. In some of the chapters in Part II of Elementi, he utilizes ideas from the article ‘Fermiers’ written by the leader of the physiocratic school, François Quesnay. Beccaria refers to the distinction between ‘la grande e la piccola coltura’ (large and small-scale production) introduced by the French economists.Footnote ¹⁷ Quesnay explained that large-scale capital-intensive agricultural production was much more profitable than the small-scale labour-intensive farming, which was predominant in France in his day. Only rich farmers could afford to make a large outlay before obtaining their first harvest. The wealthy farmer could invest in equipment, tools and horses while the poor peasant, with little capital, worked ‘with his bare hands’ and failed to cover his costs.Footnote ¹⁸ Quesnay was critical of luxury, because its pleasures enticed the wealthy to divert too much capital away from investment in agricultural production into the purchase of lavish consumer goods or services. ‘All the rich people, all those who have sufficient rents or pensions to live comfortably, travel to Paris or another large city where they spend almost all the revenue.’ This spending supported a multitude of merchants, artisans, labourers and servants, but according to Quesnay it resulted ‘in a circulation of money, not in any real increase in the wealth of a nation’.Footnote ¹⁹

In the two short treatises on ‘Luxe’ and ‘Faste’ published in the journal of the physiocrats Ephémérides du Citoyen in 1767, Nicolas Bandeau presented a synthesis of the scattered remarks of Quesnay. Bandeau explained, perhaps more clearly than his mentor, under what conditions luxury could be considered harmful and when it did not pose any problems to society. As Beccaria had done three years earlier, Bandeau also identifies two different kinds of luxury in his treatises of 1767, but they are not the same ones that Beccaria used. Later in this article, I discuss at length Beccaria's identification and analysis of the two kinds of luxury, luxury of comfort and luxury of ostentation, in his work Of Crimes and Punishments published in 1764. Bandeau distinguished between ‘luxe de décoration’ (luxury of decoration) and ‘luxe de subsistence’ (luxury of subsistence). By the first, he understood luxuries procured from the ‘sterile’ classes, and by the second from the ‘productive’ classes. Farmers and landed proprietors were the productive classes. Manufacturers and tradesmen were the sterile classes because they depended on the wealth produced on agricultural land but did not produce any new wealth. ‘Luxe’ is by definition harmful because it involves the dissipation of funds needed for productive purposes. Spending on luxurious agricultural products was viewed as less harmful to future income because wealth remained with the productive classes. Bandeau used the term ‘faste’ to refer to luxury that might be good and useful because it does not interfere with investment for improvements in agricultural production. There were two kinds of ‘faste’: ‘faste de consommation’ and ‘faste de décoration’. The former referred to consumption of natural products, such as the feasts of medieval lords; the second referred to the purchase and use of manufactured goods. Regardless of the lavishness of the products – enamelled coaches, gilded mirrors – they were not considered to be luxuries if their use did not diminish their owner's capital investments.Footnote ²⁰

While Beccaria appreciates the need for capital investment in agricultural production, he notes the shortcomings of very large operations and enormous concentrations of wealth. He explains the idleness of many large landowners by a discussion of human motivation, pain and pleasure. ‘To the extent that the wealth of a man increases, there will be lacking in him the spirit and the necessary stimulus of pain . . . security diminishes the internal incitement of hope in a future advantage.’ Since pain is what propels human beings into action, an individual with an enormous amount of wealth has no reason to work because he has no desire to acquire more wealth. The large landowner can use his wealth to employ others to take on his responsibilities, while he preoccupies himself with ‘capricious desires for luxury and to satisfy the need to impress public opinion’.Footnote ²¹ This is why Beccaria believes it is beneficial to abolish the practice of entails by primogeniture. The practice kept lands perpetually within the same family and in the possession of members of the privileged classes who often did not have any incentive to maximize the return from the land, since they already had acquired large amounts of wealth through marriage and inheritance. Beccaria dislikes the way wealth accumulates perpetually in only a few families whereas ‘with assiduous circulation [it] should not only be accumulating but also dividing continuously. A family that absorbs the income that would make twenty families comfortable does not take advantage of it as those would have.’ From every wealthy family many more comfortable and economically productive families could be created in the absence of the practice of primogeniture where all the wealth is given to the ‘shiftless luxury-loving oldest son’. The oldest son does not have incentive to make his land very productive since he has already so much wealth. ‘The poverty of the younger sons makes them less ambitious; from the gold and pomp of the brother they are condemned to a sterile profligate liberty.’Footnote ²² The potential dynamism, resourcefulness and productivity of many individuals are sacrificed for the aggrandizement of the family name. ‘If such lands could be sold to whomever is in a position to invest in them new capital from wealth, to return them to the original state of fertility’, the agricultural production of the country would be enhanced and indirectly the whole economy would become more prosperous.Footnote ²³

On the other hand, Beccaria observes that where there is too much equality in the distribution of wealth, individuals fall into indolence and the economy is stagnant as much as when there is too little equality. Annual production is reduced to satisfying basic subsistence, since the hope for a better life that encourages individuals to work is absent when the economy is reduced to satisfying the necessities of life. ‘Lands divided among too many people exclude those significantly great investments that contribute so much to the increase of production in agriculture.’Footnote ²⁴

Beccaria remarks that the productivity and wealth-generating effects of luxury are less effective when fewer people come to hold the available goods. This is because the influence of the expenditure made by the possessors of these goods will be more limited, since there are fewer individuals who possess the goods, regardless of how large the expense of these few individuals would be.Footnote ²⁵ The immediate aim of Beccaria is to create a more dynamic society in Milan where there would be more happiness for the greatest number of citizens and less political unrest, despite rule by a foreign power. Examination of his prescriptions for the serious unemployment that was creating uprisings and social problems in Milan, the capital city of the Duchy of Milan (then ruled by Austria), are revealing. His advice to the Board of Government of Milan after his appointment as chairman to the section on economy led to the Duchy's recovery from an economic and political crisis of long duration. Public works instead of charity ensured meaningful employment, as when dykes were built to drain a malarial marsh by diverting a river. Also, legislation was passed making taxes more progressive, distributing their impact more equitably across the various classes of the population, and increasing consumer buying power that prevented further shutting down of manufacturing because of diminishing sales.Footnote ²⁶

Beccaria considers population a factor in determining whether concentration of wealth and the ostentatious display of such wealth will favour despotism. The magnitude of the population relative to the extent of the land mass containing it is a crucial element. Where the population is small and the territory vast, luxury favours despotism. This is because when production of goods is less and there is a smaller population, ‘industry is less, those in poverty are so much more dependent on luxurious display by the wealthy, and uniting of the oppressed against the oppressors is much more difficult to accomplish and less feared’.Footnote ²⁷ In such a circumstance, the masses have little means to support themselves as there is little industry; they probably rely on subsistence farming to survive, and any extra income that they receive stems from the services and goods that are demanded by the very rich. Given their dire situation, where they have barely enough to survive, the poor hardly possess the time or resources to revolt against the wealthy, and they constantly compete with one another for the little morsels of wealth that happen to trickle down to their level. It is also easier for the wealthy to police a smaller population, since there are fewer people to control and any who do not submit will be imprisoned.

In contrast, ‘Where population multiplies at a rate greater than the rate at which the [geographical] frontier is expanding, luxury operates against despotism because it stimulates industry and the activities of human beings.’ Importantly, Beccaria differentiates ‘luxury of comfort’ from ‘luxury of ostentation’ to explain this. Luxury of ostentation is the kind of luxury with which the very wealthy engage in display; it originates from vanity. Luxury of comfort, in contrast, consists of those expenditures that directly make for a pleasurable existence. ‘In those countries that are vast, weak and sparsely populated, ostentatious luxury prevails over “just” luxury of comfort, while in those countries more densely populated . . . the luxury of comfort always reduces and replaces luxury of ostentation.’ With a dense population, the people are freer from the oppression of the ruling elite since the rulers have more difficulty keeping them under surveillance. Beccaria utilizes the adjective ‘just’ for luxury of comfort. Such luxury is more just because with a larger population and economy more citizens can enjoy it. Where there is more luxury of comfort than luxury of ostentation and a prosperous society, there is a reduction in the friction between social classes because the poor are not constantly reminded of the wealth of the rich through their displays of wealth, and as a result there is greater social stability. ‘It [luxury of comfort] offers so many pleasures and comforts to the rich that there is little desire remaining for those of ostentation, which otherwise would augment the conviction [in the lower classes] of dependence.’Footnote ²⁸

This line of thought is continued by Beccaria in the introduction to his chapter on luxury in Elementi. He notes that there are basically three groups in society. The most numerous are the poor, who have barely enough resources to permit them to survive. Second, there are ‘many who have sufficient wealth to live a much more abundant life, enjoy leisure and comfort, impress others with a precise tidiness, and who with an overshadowing power tacitly menace and patronize those poorer than themselves’. Finally, there is a much smaller group who have by far the most power and influence. At their command is a surfeit of pleasures and satisfaction ‘and tired of the limited [natural] ability that everyone has to enjoy and feel, [they] are forced by vanity and ostentation to have others participate in their power’.Footnote ²⁹ In this description of the three social classes Beccaria uses the term ‘comfort’ to describe what the second group enjoys, while he uses the words ‘vanity and ostentation’ to describe what motivates the very wealthy to seek the pleasures of luxury. Very wealthy individuals already have ‘all of the comforts and pleasures of life’. Since luxury of comfort, unlike luxury of ostentation, would mostly involve individuals from the second, more numerous class of citizens, luxury of comfort is the most useful kind to a society that would maximize the happiness of the largest number of individuals. Luxury of comfort is not only useful, but also more just than the luxury of ostentation.

For Bandeau, it would be an injustice to prevent the rich from enjoying their wealth. Every owner of property has the right to enjoy his or her income as she or he sees fit.Footnote ³⁰ The physiocrats were preoccupied with the question of whether luxury increases the overall productivity of the nation. The opulent lifestyles of the landed aristocracy or the grandiose monuments of sovereigns, if they do not interfere with investment in agricultural production, should not be considered luxuries, but as harmless expenditures, ‘faste’. In contrast, to assess whether luxury is just or unjust, Beccaria poses a question not raised by the physiocrats: how many people will be able to enjoy these luxuries and the general increase in goods and services produced to which they give rise? Unlike Bandeau, he articulates the distinction between two kinds of luxury in terms of distribution of wealth across the society and not solely in terms of the change in the aggregate of the society's income.

II. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW BUT EQUITY IN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE

Beccaria ends his treatment of luxury in Of Crimes and Punishments declaring that, while a prosperous economy where more people can enjoy the pleasures of luxury is very desirable, many citizens will still consider deserting the country if there are not laws that maintain security without overly restricting liberty. ‘As the noble beasts and the freedom-loving birds . . . abandon the most fertile and most desirable countryside to humankind . . . similarly, people flee pleasures when it is submitting to tyranny that would make them available.’Footnote ³¹ He points to the importance of designing laws that maximize individual liberty, since it also contributes to the happiness of human beings.

On the other hand, Beccaria is aware that the economy cannot function well without the support that it receives from the state through the limits set by the state on the pursuit of private interest, such as enjoying luxury in a way that would diminish the productivity of the economy. Individuals exchange with the state a limited portion of their personal liberty for security and for activities ‘most useful to the largest number of individuals’ made possible through a well-ordered society. ‘Necessity caused people to contribute part of their personal liberty: no individual wants to put in the hands of the public any more than the minimum portion that will induce his fellows to defend his interests.’ Limitations on individual freedom must not surpass the minimum ‘necessary to maintain the bond that keeps united the majority of individuals in the group, who would revert, without those ties, to the original savage state of unsociability’.Footnote ³² For example, the state's right to punish does not extend to a right to apply the death penalty. Individuals living in society must abandon a portion of their liberty but this need not include the control they have over their own existence. The death penalty is illegitimate in the eyes of most citizens because ‘men, in the most secret recess of their spirits . . . have always believed that one's own life can be in the power of no one’.Footnote ³³ He shows that the use of such excessive force would result in citizens perceiving the justice system as unjust. Just as the wealthy set a bad example to the rest of society when they hoard most of their wealth rather than spend it, ministers of justice and others who process the carrying out of a death sentence on criminals also set an example that is undesirable.Footnote ³⁴ Beccaria observes that commerce and civilization, which have made a luxurious lifestyle possible, have also reduced such cold-blooded barbarity: ‘virtues, humanity, charity and toleration . . . [originated] from the lap of luxury . . . in Europe [leading to] a diminution of those atrocious crimes which brought groans from our ancestors, and made them in turn either tyrant or slave’.Footnote ³⁵

When Beccaria presents some cases, such as the one against capital punishment on the basis that it violates the natural right of every person to preserve his or her own being, he relies upon contractarian reasoning instead of the utilitarian philosophy he used in most of his legal, political and economic writings. Only in extreme cases of treason or open rebellion, he avowed, did the state have the right to override a person's right to life and literally to make war upon its own citizens. It was the use by Beccaria of contractarian theory that led one of the first critics of Of Crimes and Punishments, Ferdinando Facchinei, to call Beccaria ‘the Rousseau of the Italians’ and ‘a socialist’.Footnote ³⁶ Franco Venturi showed that this was the first time that the term ‘socialist’ was used in Italian with the express meaning that a writer wanted a society of free and equal men. For his part, Facchinei believed that people were anything but free and equal. Since they were ‘poor or rich, strong or weak . . . they needed an authority to guide and punish them . . . and this authority needed the support of torture and the death penalty to be effective’.Footnote ³⁷ Venturi praised Beccaria for having taken up ‘the two great themes of the century, happiness and equality . . . Of Crimes and Punishments was one fragment of the whole of society as conceived by Beccaria.’Footnote ³⁸

When Beccaria's writings on luxury are compared to those of Rousseau it is apparent that Beccaria was not merely another Rousseau. Rousseau thought that the ideal society was one that tended towards economic equality – such as Corsica's subsistence agricultural economy, which he had observed. With an end to the privileges of the feudal aristocracy, land could be distributed more equally among the citizenry and the provinces. ‘The state ought to grant distinctions founded only on merit, on the virtues, and for services rendered to the country. These distinctions should not be any more hereditary than the qualities on which they were based.’Footnote ³⁹ Where there was little difference between classes, and wealth was distributed equally among the citizenry, there would not be any luxury spending, an expenditure that Rousseau believed was corrupting to morals. He admired the sumptuary laws of his homeland Geneva. The sumptuous clothes of Genevan upper- and middle-class women had been confiscated, their husbands fined, and some of the women sent to prison. He approved the theocratic Calvinist state's interference in the private lives of Genevans because he thought that this allowed them to experience ‘precious freedom’ that can only be experienced when people are virtuous and not lost to vain luxuries and pleasures.Footnote ⁴⁰ Rousseau also admired the austere lifestyle of Spartan society and idealized it as a golden age before the appearance of the arts and sciences when luxury and the human vices began to afflict humanity. Footnote ⁴¹

In contrast to Rousseau, Beccaria ingeniously shows that, while there were fewer inequalities between classes and the acquisition of monetary gain was not a preoccupation, in Sparta luxury did exist. Indeed, he contends ‘luxury may be found in all ranks [of human society] and throughout the ages wherever human beings have been sociable’. Arrogance and envy are not the only explanations of the desire for luxury. ‘In every society . . . the two main sources of luxury . . . boredom and vanity exist.’ Beccaria believes that through these feelings, the basic characteristics of human nature – the universal desires to avoid pain and to enjoy pleasures – motivate luxury. He defines luxury as ‘every expenditure that is made to limit pain, the privation of pleasure’.Footnote ⁴² An illustration of this is a person who experiences a most lasting pleasure, such as one who has been able to acquire the food with a particular flavour that suits his or her palate. In the aftermath of eating that food, she or he is living in luxury. While non-conspicuous consumption was prevalent in Sparta, the territory Sparta ruled was one of the most fertile in the Mediterranean and its free citizens, in contrast to the slaves, could enjoy delectable food as they chose. An individual who is only worried about satisfying his or her general hunger and who finally manages to consume just any kind of food is not living a life of luxury, but instead is living in poverty where she or he is only satisfying his or her basic needs. Beccaria hones his basic definition of luxury as an expenditure that ‘limits pain’ by adding, and ‘provides a pleasure that also lasts for some time after the pain has been removed [the italics are mine]’.

Even in Sparta, ‘there was a need for pleasure and a need to differentiate oneself. However, these were so amalgamated with the political constitution that everything became public virtue.’ The Spartan lifestyle was not as devoid of pleasures as it first appears: ‘their pleasure and delight . . . arose confused and enveloped by the clang of spears, and mixed with the cries of lament of the conquered and enemy made prisoner’. Vanity motivated many of their actions: a Spartan soldier ‘smiled proudly in finding himself surrounded by iron and heavy with weapons’. In a society that prized valour in battle, a Spartan man who wanted to distinguish himself and receive praise ‘looked for the most attractive menacing situations with all his might’.

As noted above, Rousseau believed that ‘precious freedom’ could only be experienced when one was ‘not lost to vain luxuries and pleasures’. In contrast, Beccaria shows that when one enjoys luxury one is also experiencing freedom of choice, and it is more powerful than mere physical pain or pleasure. The tale of the three hundred Spartans and their leader Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae is illustrative. They voluntarily sacrificed their lives to gain the time that an alliance of the Greek city-states needed to organize a counter-offensive to defeat the Persian invaders. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Spartans carefully combed and arranged their long hair and appeared to be enjoying a festive occasion before the battle. Similarly, it is vanity that caused the Spartan women to wear a ‘severe suit of clothes; they were the female counterpart of male sturdiness and vigour’.Footnote ⁴³ Beccaria maintains that both the Spartan men and the women took pride in their choice of an austere way of life, relished it, and did not succumb to the temptation to live a more comfortable existence. This does not much differ from European commercial society where, although living in a different epoch and culture, important motivations have been vanity and the search for pleasure.

Beccaria, unlike Rousseau, defends equality only in the area of law, not in the economy. Interpretation of the law should not depend upon ‘the feebleness of the sufferer in the case’ or the ‘relations between the judge and the victim’. The judge's decisions should not vary according to the nature of the power relations between the accused and the victim, and the judge and the victim. Then the wealthy or more powerful would not be acquitted or be given a less harsh sentence even when they committed the same crime as the poorer or weaker man. Otherwise, the result could be that ‘the same crime might be punished differently by the same court at different times’.Footnote ⁴⁴ The sovereign is the lawful depositary and administrator of the liberty that has been sacrificed by every individual in order that he or she may enjoy security and peace. ‘Deposit is not enough, it has to be defended from the private encroachment of each individual, since he or she tries . . . to purloin what has voluntarily been contributed by others [to the common pool].’ For the state to be effective in this regard, the agents of the sovereign, the judges, have to be impartial. Beccaria is pronouncing the principle of equality before the law. Still, he knows that insisting on legal equality might provoke the wrath of the nobility who would rather use their power and advantage to procure what they want at the expense of everyone else, which in the long run would be to every person's detriment, even to those of their own class. ‘These principles will displease those who make it their right to transmit to their inferiors the blows of tyranny that they themselves received from their superiors.’ The interdependence of the classes is highlighted in this statement, as they were in the earlier discussion of how wealth spreads from the upper classes to lower classes when the wealthy spend their excess income on luxuries. In this case, contrary to the latter, the influence of the upper classes on the lower classes would be negative. They pass on the despotic treatment that they receive from their superiors to the classes below them – thus producing ‘until now one long and authorized example of cold atrocity’.Footnote ⁴⁵

On the other hand, Beccaria feared that to institute economic equality could destroy ambition, innovation and industriousness. There would not be the differences among the classes that provide incentives for those with less wealth to continue to engage in productive economic activity. The poor are enticed to work in the belief that they can soon experience some of the pleasures of luxury no matter how small, and, just as important according to Beccaria, in the hope that they can achieve a better future for themselves and their progeny. ‘The seductive image of pleasure is hope, the very sweet seductress of mortals, for whom they willingly swallow gulps of unhappiness since it is mixed with a few drops of happiness.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Regardless of the success rate that they experience in achieving their aim, such aspiration prevents people from falling into indolence.

The manner in which Beccaria approaches the question of luxury has broader implications for utilitarianism. Several scholars have questioned the accuracy of crediting the theory of utility with an effective interest in distribution as well as aggregation, and of considering Bentham an economic liberal. It is not within the scope of this article to discuss at length the resulting discussion, but it is mentioned briefly here since Bentham praised the insights of Beccaria, a political and economic liberal, and declared the great respect he had for his work. Critics such as John Rawls and H. L. A Hart claimed that this ethical theory, in contrast to the psychological kind, is concerned with maximizing aggregate happiness, but it does not consider how some individuals could be sacrificed in order to increase the overall happiness. The utility theory of Beccaria and Bentham shared some common characteristics. Contrary to the opinion of Rawls and Hart, Frederick Rosen has shown that ‘Bentham was concerned with the distribution of pleasure and pain rather than solely with its aggregation’. Rosen quotes some lines of Bentham's mnemonic verse from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation as evidence: ‘Such pleasures seek, if private by thy end: / If it be public, wide let them extend.’ A legislator whose aim is to promote happiness in the public sphere should not be concerned with (only) the aggregation of private pleasure, but with the extension of pleasure throughout the society.Footnote ⁴⁷ Beccaria had followed this same principle when he suggested that luxury of comfort was preferable to luxury of ostentation because luxury of comfort distributes luxuries and pleasures in a manner that generates them over a larger number of people.

Frank Petrella ‘argues that Bentham's use of the principle of utility undermines any commitment to economic liberty as the condition within which the maximum of social well-being can arise out of uncoerced social interaction’.Footnote ⁴⁸ For an interpretation of some of Bentham's writings, mostly unpublished, that may make possible an indirect utilitarian theory, which would counter Petrella's comments, see P. J. Kelly's writings.Footnote ⁴⁹

Beccaria's argument regarding luxury – that before the law equality should prevail but economic output should be distributed equitably – is what one would expect from a political and economic liberal. To facilitate maximization he favours that coercion would be minimized and most of the intervention by government would be in the way of providing security and justice for the individual. He places more importance on the distributive than on the aggregative accomplishments of a policy to implement the utility theory of luxury. He is confident in the ability of the individual to recognize what is in his or her best interest. An economic liberal regarding policy towards luxury, Beccaria believes that legislation could be created which would provide a set of positive and negative incentives to encourage human beings, by following their own self-interest, to maximize their individual utility, to be just towards one another, and, partly as an unintended consequence, to maximize social utility.Footnote ⁵⁰

Beccaria believes that the laws of the state must act to produce a more level playing field, freedom of opportunity, so that everyone receives what approximates to his or her fair reward. There are laws that protect private property, and which can be used to enforce agreements or contracts. ‘Everything would languish if infractions by the inevitable wrong-doers were not remedied in part by laws.’Footnote ⁵¹ He recommends that individuals should suffer a cost when they are able but ‘do not contribute to society either with work or with wealth’, just as they should benefit when they provide society's needs. For the wealthy to be given a fair trial, the judges must follow the basic principle of whether their idleness serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the principle that should guide all enlightened magistrates.Footnote ⁵² The most suitable punishment for theft is forced hard labour for the community because an individual has enriched himself by taking away a portion of the property that rightfully belongs to someone else who has contributed labour and capital for its production.Footnote ⁵³ The establishment of equal treatment before the law makes it possible for those who acquired the wealth through industriousness to enjoy their wealth without fear that their rewards may be usurped. ‘Every distinction, whether it be regarding honours or riches, supposes a previous equality based on the law.’ Laws prevent society from returning to the state of nature that was a perpetual state of war before individuals agreed to relinquish some of their freedom to the sovereign. Part of this agreement was that the ‘most industrious will have the most honours [such as a luxurious lifestyle] . . . but does not fear from the others that they will violate the pacts through which he is elevated above them’.Footnote ⁵⁴

In his legal reforms, Beccaria defends equality before the law. Punishments ‘should be the same for the first as for the last citizen’.Footnote ⁵⁵ On the other hand, he promotes equity in the economic sphere. Since an equal distribution of resources would not reflect the unique contribution of every individual, it could cause a miscarriage of justice, lack the quality of fairness, and hinder optimum production. The use of luxury develops and is manifested through the way people differ, not only by ‘the quantity [and quality] of goods that they acquire, but also by the quality, birth and other characteristics of the person, such as education and temperament’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Any attempt ‘to wrench out luxury from a nation, would be an attempt to destroy one of those faculties that are inherent to mankind’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Likewise, designing laws that do not appeal to the conscious calculation of individuals would also be fruitless. He refers to the debate on luxury as an example of how it is easy to fix attention on one side of a question and then judge the whole issue solely by results obtained from that side only. Beccaria's balanced and systematic study shows how luxury ‘can be just as damaging as it can be useful, according to how it is combined and what it is working against, or, moreover, results from the circumstances or the laws of the state, good ones or bad’.Footnote ⁵⁸ The single ethical standpoint synonymous with justice is the same whether he is discussing political, economic or legal issues. Beccaria identifies luxury of comfort and explains that such self-interested actions of individuals are desirable when they play a part in the attainment of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

This article shows that Beccaria was very interested in the phenomenon and noumenon called luxury, observed and analysed its influence in the world around him, and theorized regarding its potential for harm and good. We have seen that he applies a consequentialist test to decide whether the enjoyment of luxury should be curtailed or increased and which of the two kinds of luxury would be more desirable, luxury of comfort or of ostentation. He notes that the effect of luxury emanates upward and downward from a social class to the classes that are its closest neighbours, as well as within a given class, and gradually percolates throughout the society. The beneficial effect of the luxury of comfort would be multiplied and spread more widely in a general population with moderately large inequalities in income and a large number of consumers. The luxury of comfort, unlike the luxury of ostentation, is directly pleasurable to the individual consumer and to be enjoyed does not require a visible contrast in the quantity and quality of consumption of a given class with those of a lower or higher class. Luxury of comfort consequently contributes less to friction between classes and tends to create a smoothly operating society conducive to a more productive economy. Of the three social classes, Beccaria observes that the income of the poor is relatively insignificant, and the middle class includes more people than the very wealthy class. The expenditure on luxury of the very wealthy class is not as useful as that of the middle class because, although expenditure by individuals in the very wealthy class may be very great, the very wealthy class is composed of fewer individuals than the middle class and hence aggregate expenditure by the very wealthy class is less than the aggregate amount by the middle class. Also, already having too much of everything, the very wealthy depend more on luxury of ostentation for their enjoyment, and it is less beneficial to a society than luxury of comfort. The expenditure on luxury of the middle class is the most conducive to a prosperous economy. Nevertheless, the expenditure on luxury of the very wealthy class is also useful because it causes the rest of society, in emulating them, to continue to strive for more luxury long after their needs have been met.

Beccaria discusses how the greatest total of happiness for society as a whole may be achieved and what the alternatives in the distribution of happiness are. He promotes equality before the law but argues that in economic exchange equity maintains motivation. As those whose input is more valuable are rewarded accordingly, productivity will increase. Since freedom of choice is itself a kind of luxury, happiness will be directly increased when the government, while maintaining the security of all, respects the liberty of individuals to choose what they consider is in their interest. Beccaria believes that legislation to create an environment that motivates citizens to make choices which maximize utility is superior to an approach that attempts to achieve this by coercion. Beccaria's writings indicate that he is a liberal in the utilitarian tradition with an extensive and excellent understanding of the concept of luxury. He shows that, when the middle class and the poor are enabled to visualize the possibility of enjoying more luxury of comfort, hope harnesses them more securely to the economic engine, making it more productive. Beccaria concludes that co-operant legislation utilizing the natural desire of individuals to increase their enjoyment of luxury would contribute significantly to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.Footnote ⁵⁹