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 on proof of the alleged facts, the apprentice may be discharged by a certificate under the hands of the justices. In like manner, by § 4, on the complaint of the master on oath, of misbehaviour on the part of the apprentice, he may be summoned before the two justices, who may commit him to the house of correction to hard labour for any time, not exceeding a kalendar month, or they may, as in the former case, sign a certificate for his discharge. By § 5, either party has the privilege of an appeal to the next Quarter Sessions. If an apprentice, with whom a premium under L. 10 has been paid, shall absent himself from his master’s, service, it is provided, by the 6th Geo. Ill. c. 25, that he shall either serve for so long a time beyond the period of his service, or make any other suitable satisfaction to his master for the loss of his labour. In case of his refusal, he may be apprehended, and brought before a justice, who may determine the satisfaction that shall be made; and, on his refusal to comply with this determination, he may be committed to the house of correction for three months. The master may make application for compensation within seven years after the expiration of the term of apprenticeship. Either party may appeal against the decision of the justices to the Quarter Sessions.

By the common law, minors may bind themselves out as apprentices, and if they serve out their regular term, they are entitled to all the privileges of apprentices. But no minor can contract such an obligation as will entitle the master to maintain an action against him, provided he either departs from his service, or commits any other breach of his engagement. He may indeed correct him in his service, or complain to a Justice of the Peace to have him pursued according to the 5th Eliz. But no remedy lies against a minor for breach of any such covenant. The children of paupers may, however, be apprenticed out by the overseers, with consent of two Justices, and in this case (5th Eliz. c. 4; 43d Eliz. c. 2. Cro. Car. 179.), the indenture is obligatory, though the apprentice be under age. In consequence of the incapacity of the minor to enter into any regular contract of apprenticeship, the usual practice is to procure some of his friends to become surety for his due performance of the engagement into which he enters. According to the custom of London, a minor above the age of fourteen, may bind himself apprentice to a freeman in London by indenture, with proper covenants, and these covenants are in law equally binding as if he were of full age.

Indentures were formerly subject to a variety of duties which were imposed by successive acts, and these duties necessarily gave rise to a series of intricate enactments, which frequently occasioned much perplexity and inconvenience. By the 44th Geo. III. c. 98, § 8, all those numerous duties were consolidated into one simple duty on the stamp, which varies from 14 shillings to 19 guineas, according to the premium which is paid with the apprentice. By the 43d Geo. Ill. c. 161, an annual duty is imposed of L. 1, 1s. on every apprentice who pays a premium above L. 20.—See Jacob’s Law Dictionary.—Smith’s Wealth of Nations, with Notes, and an additional volume of Dissertations, by David Buchanan.

APPRENTICESHIP. The Encyclopædia contains an account of the rules by which apprenticeships are regulated in different countries, together with a view of the objections urged by Dr Smith, against the utility of the engagement concluded between the apprentice and his master.

Dr Smith considers the institution of apprenticeships as a device, by which trading corporations endeavour to confine to as few hands as possible the mystery of their craft, and by which, keeping the market always understocked with their particular sort of labour, they expect to regulate according to their discretion the price of such manufactures as they bring to market. He accordingly condemns all those laws which limit the number of apprentices, to be taken by each master in particular trades, or which prescribe to apprentices a certain term of service before they are permitted to work as journeymen. The tendency of such laws, he observes, is to restrain the competition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the trade; the limitations of the number of apprentices restraining it directly, and a long apprenticeship restraining it indirectly, but as effectually, by increasing the expence of education. Long apprenticeships, or indeed any apprenticeship, for however short a term, Dr Smith considers quite unnecessary, as the nicest mechanical arts, such as the making of clocks and watches, contain, according to his theory, no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. A few weeks, he calculates, or even a few days, would be sufficient to enable a mechanic to set to work in any of those trades; and if he were paid the full price for his work, he paying of course for such materials as he might spoil through awkwardness and inexperience, he imagines that he would learn his business more effectually, and be more apt to acquire habits of attention and industry, than when he works under a master who has a right to share in the produce of his labour.

It may be generally remarked, however, that, in his reasonings on these subjects, Dr Smith seems uniformly disposed to overrate the practical effect of those expedients by which corporations have been always endeavouring to secure special advantages for particular trades; and that his theory respecting apprenticeships is only a part of that more general theory, by which he endeavours to show that the policy of Europe has always been to encourage the industry of the towns at the expence of that of the country; and that the effect of this policy has been to enable the merchants and manufacturers of the town, in bartering their produce for that of the country, to levy, for several centuries, an unjust and oppressive tax on the agricultural classes of the community. We know, however, that, according to the nature of human society, as it is so admirably explained in Dr Smith's work, monopoly can never succeed on so great a scale; and, on the same principle, we may rationally question if the contract between the apprentice and his master were merely the device of corporations, whether it ever could have come into such universal use throughout Europe. The engagement by which the apprentice is bound to his master, is his own voluntary act. He agrees to bind himself to work to his master at an inferior rate, on condition 