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 of receiving from his master the necessary instruction in his business. This instruction, Dr Smith asserts, may be given him in the course of a few days or weeks. It is well known, however, to every practical tradesman, or to any one acquainted with the nature of mechanical employments, that the instruction of three days or weeks would scarcely teach an apprentice the name of his tools, and that almost all the mechanical trades require, throughout their various operations, such nicety and exactness, that the necessary habits are not formed by the training of years, in place of weeks or days. It is for the troublesome superintendence of the apprentice during this period that the master exacts compensation, without which he would employ none but finished workmen. But he puts up with the awkwardness of his apprentice, because he expects to be benefited by his labour after he shall be better instructed in his business; on the same principle that the farmer lays out his capital on the improvement of his land, in expectation of a future increase of produce. The contract of apprenticeship is thus a voluntary agreement between two parties for their mutual benefit, the result neither of law nor of the usages of petty corporations, but of circumstances. The law, indeed, takes cognizance of the contract, and enforces its fulfilment; and it may also have encumbered it with absurd regulations. But the contract itself stands independent both of law and usage, having its origin in the plainest principles of reciprocal expediency. There seems no reason therefore to class it with those artificial expedients which originate in the exclusive spirit of trading corporations.

Dr Smith appears also to have greatly overrated the effects of those laws, the object of which is to limit the number of apprentices which shall be reared to particular trades. No law of any corporation will ever be found in practice to impose any limitation on the number of apprentices which will be trained to a business. It will depend on the state of the business, whether it is advancing, stationary, or declining, what number of apprentices will be bred to it; and if, while a flourishing trade called for a continual supply of new hands, any corporation were to enact a law, limiting the masters to such a number of apprentices as would barely keep up their present stock, a scarcity of hands would soon be felt, wages would rise, and the masters would soon be induced, by regard to their own interest, to rescind the law which imposed so great an inconvenience on themselves. But if the law is thus modified and accommodated to the state of the trade, it is a mere form. It imposes in reality no restraint, since it is always in the power of the masters to alter it whenever they feel that it interferes with their arrangements.

But though the law were even rigidly persisted in, it is evident that it would not permanently diminish the number of apprentices, which would be bred to a business, since the consequence would be, that the workmen would turn masters, and each taking the full allowance of apprentices which the law permits, would soon train up an ample supply of hands. All those petty contrivances of corporations, therefore, though they may originate in the lowest mercantile jealousy, and though they may be exceedingly absurd, cannot materially disturb the general progress of things; and, though they may harass individuals, their effect on the industry of a great country hardly deserves notice; their bad effects being corrected by those general causes on which society depends for completing its arrangements, in spite of the obstacles arising from the mistaken policy of legislators.—See Smith’s Wealth of Nations, with Notes, and an additional volume of Dissertations, by David Buchanan.

 AQUA TOFANA, called also Aqua della Toffanina, or Aqua della Tofa, from its supposed inventress,—Aqua del petesino, —Aquetta di Napoli, or simply Aquetta,—a poisonous liquor which was used to a very great extent at Naples and Rome during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Gmelin says, that more people were destroyed by it than by the plague, which had prevailed a short time before it came into use; and Garelli, chief physician to the Emperor, wrote to Hoffmann that Tofania confessed she had used it to poison more than six hundred persons. This he learnt from the Emperor himself, to whom the whole criminal process instituted against her was transmitted.

It is to be regretted, that Garelli, who had such an authentic source of information, has not given us some details of the infamous Tofana or Tofania; as the little that we know of her rests upon the authority of travellers, and is evidently exaggerated, and sometimes irreconcilable with established facts. She was a Sicilian by birth, and resided first at Palermo, and then at Naples. When she began to exercise her horrible profession, is nowhere stated; but it will presently appear, that it must have been at a very early age, and before 1659. She was extremely liberal of her preparation, chiefly it is said, to ladies tired of their husbands; and the better to conceal the nature of her gift, it was put up in small flat phials, inscribed Manna of St Nicholas of Bari, ornamented on one side with an image of the Saint, that it might pass for a liquid said to drop from his tomb at Bari, which was in great request on account of the medicinal virtues ascribed to it. Nor is it ascertained how long she carried on her murderous practices with impunity and undiscovered. Labat says, that when he was at Civita Vecchia in 1709, the Viceroy of Naples, then Count Daun, made the discovery. It was long before she was secured, as she was extremely cautious, and often changed her abode or retired into Convents. At last she was betrayed, and, although in a Convent, was seized and carried to the Castel del Uovo, where she was examined. Cardinal Pignatelli, then Archbishop of Naples, indignant at the violation of a religious sanctuary, threatened to excommunicate