In its pecuniary incidence this line of (necessary) expenditure belongs under the rubric of Conspicuous Waste; and one will always have to face the disquieting flexibility of this item of expenditure.

The consumptive demand of this kind is in an eminent degree "indefinitely extensible," as the phrasing of the economists would have it, and as various historical instances of courtly splendor and fashionable magnificence will abundantly substantiate.
There is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional "standard of living" to the limit set by the available means; and yet these conventional necessities will ordinarily not, in the aggregate, take up all the available means; although now and again, as under the _Ancien Regime_, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the standard of splendid living may also exceed the current means in hand and lead to impoverishment of the underlying community.
An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexibility of the conventional standard of living and of pecuniary magnificence can not be gone into here.

In the case under consideration it will have to be left as an indeterminate but considerable item in the burden of cost which the projected Imperial rule may be counted on to impose on the underlying peoples.

The cost of the Imperial court, nobility, and civil service, therefore, would be a matter of estimate, on which no close agreement would be expected; and yet, here as in an earlier connection, it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dignity and magnificence could be put in evidence by such a large-scale establishment at a lower aggregate cost than the aggregate of expenditures previously incurred for the like ends by various nations working in severalty and at cross purposes.
Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this production of dignity by means of a lavish expenditure on superfluities, to believe that the same principle of economy should apply here as was found applicable in the matter of armament for defense.

With the installation of a collective national establishment, to include substantially all the previously competing nations, the need of defensive armament should in all reason decline to something very inconsiderable indeed.