1743, John Wesley, An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, London: G. Whitfield, 1796, A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part II, III.1, p. 212, https://books.google.ca/books?id=A6FgAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Surely you cannot be ignorant, that the sinfulness of fine apparel lies chiefly in the expensiveness. In that it is robbing God and the Poor; it is defrauding the fatherless and the widow; it is wasting the food of the hungry, and with-holding his raiment from the naked, to consume it on our own lusts.
Source: wiktionary
1922, Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, Chapter 14: Formal Dinners, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14314/14314-h/14314-h.htm
Enchanting dining-rooms and tables have been achieved with an outlay amounting to comparatively nothing. ¶ There is a dining-room in a certain small New York house that is quite as inviting as it is lacking in expensiveness.
Source: wiktionary
Apart from the expensiveness of everything, there were recurrent shortages of this and that, which, of course, always hit the poor rather than the rich.
Source: wiktionary