Montesquieu, though not richer, have always been wrought with less expense, and therefore with more profit, than the Turkish mines in their neighbourhood.The Turkish mines are wrought by slaves; and the arms of those slaves are the only machines which the Turks have ever thought of employing.The Hungarian mines are wrought by freemen, who employ a great deal of machinery, by which they facilitate and abridge their own labour.From the very little that is known about the price of manufactures in the times of the Greeks and Romans, it would appear that those of the finer sort were excessively dear.Silk sold for its weight in gold.It was not, indeed, in those times a European manufacture; and as it was all brought from the East Indies, the distance of the carriage may in some measure account for the greatness of price.
The price, however, which a lady, it is said, would sometimes pay for a piece of very fine linen, seems to have been equally extravagant; and as linen was always either a European, or at farthest, an Egyptian manufacture, this high price can be accounted for only by the great expense of the labour which must have been employed about it, and the expense of this labour again could arise from nothing but the awkwardness of the machinery which it made use of.The price of fine woollens too, though not quite so extravagant, seems however to have been much above that of the present times.Some cloths, we are told by Pliny, dyed in a particular manner, cost a hundred denarii, or three pounds six shillings and eightpence the pound weight.Others dyed in another manner cost a thousand denarii the pound weight, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence.The Roman pound, it must be remembered, contained only twelve of our avoirdupois ounces.This high price, indeed, seems to have been principally owing to the dye.But had not the cloths themselves been much dearer than any which are made in the present times, so very expensive a dye would not probably have been bestowed upon them.The disproportion would have been too great between the value of the accessory and that of the principal.The price mentioned by the same author of some Triclinaria, a sort of woollen pillows or cushions made use of to lean upon as they reclined upon their couches at table, passes all credibility; some of them being said to have cost more than thirty thousand, others more than three hundred thousand pounds.This high price, too, is not said to have arisen from the dye.In the dress of the people of fashion of both ***es there seems to have been much less variety, it is observed by Doctor Arbuthnot, in ancient than in modern times;and the very little variety which we find in that of the ancient statues confirms his observation.He infers from this that their dress must upon the whole have been cheaper than ours; but the conclusion does not seem to follow.When the expense of fashionable dress is very great, the variety must be very small.
But when, by the improvements in the productive powers of manufacturing art and industry, the expense of any one dress comes to be very moderate, the variety will naturally be very great.The rich, not being able to distinguish themselves by the expense of any one dress, will naturally endeavour to do so by the multitude and variety of their dresses.