English Economic History: Select Documents

by Unknown

Mr. Hart Davis could not disguise from himself that the present measure was attended with many difficulties. It would undoubtedly be of great advantage to our manufacturers that the present law should be repealed, and that every restraint should be removed from the rising generation. Supposing a person brought up to a trade for which from his constitution he was not fit, was he to be excluded from pursuing any other pursuit, or occupation whatever? Suppose the trade of button-makers, which was a trade that speedily passed away; or of gun-makers, of whom probably 40,000 might be in a few months thrown out of employment, was it to be held that they could follow no other occupation, but must remain a burden upon the community? The more he considered the present measure, the more he was satisfied of its utility.

Mr. Protheroe explained that he could wish a general review of the whole system.

Mr. Giddy thought if any one measure more than another could be said to involve the general rights of mankind, the present was that measure. What was this but the general right of the inhabitants of this country to employ the energies of their mind and body in the way they themselves pleased? And if a system were to be continued by which men were deprived of this general and undoubted right, it seemed to be incumbent on those who contended for the continuance of such a restriction to shew on what principle it was founded. If gentlemen attended to the time in which the law in question was passed, they would find it was a period in which many ill-advised monopolies had been granted, and one in which remonstrances on that subject had been made by the House of Commons on the impolicy of such a system, which had not been much attended to. Nothing, he was convinced, had contributed so much as the law in question to check the progress in our arts and manufactures.

Sir C. Mordaunt, on the part of his constituents, the manufacturers of Birmingham, was strongly in favour of the present repeal. If the law, as it now stood, were put in force, it would have the effect of imposing the strongest possible fetters upon ingenuity and industry.

Mr. Thompson liked liberty; and doing so, he wished to see every man have the liberty of employing his hands and his genius in the best way he could to his own advantage, and for the benefit of the country. This no man was at liberty to do, so long as the present law remained in force. He wished the law totally repealed, though the Bill did not go so far. The present law was necessarily broken every day. It was clear that the judges always wished to evade it, when they could do so. He knew a case of two men who were prosecuted under the Act for sawing a piece of wood; another, of a good and bad baker in the same town; where the bad one, finding that the good one had not served a regular apprenticeship, had him turned out, and got liberty to poison all his neighbours with his bad bread. Some years ago the printers struck, and there was a difficulty in getting even the parliamentary papers printed. Let those who chose it bind their children as apprentices; but let not others be compelled to do the same. Instances of the absurdity of the law would be innumerable. It was none the better for the age of it, which the worthy baronet had stated. It was, in fact, superannuated; and it was much the kindest way to let it die quietly, and so confer an advantage both on the country and Ireland. Lord Ellenborough once got the coach-makers out of a scrape ingeniously enough. They were attacked as wheelmakers; but his lordship said that coaches could not have been known in Elizabeth's days, as that queen went to parliament on horseback. He perfectly agreed in the opinion which Lord Mansfield had given, in speaking of the Act of Elizabeth, that "it was against the natural rights of man, and contrary to the common law rights of the land."

Mr. Rose considered this as a subject of extraordinary difficulty. After all that had been said, he could not help thinking that if the Bill were passed into law, it would put an end to apprenticeships altogether; for no person would subject himself to a seven years' servitude when he knew that having fulfilled his indenture, he would only be on a level with a man who perhaps had not been one year at the business. He was willing to examine and improve the 5th of Elizabeth, but would not agree to this unqualified repeal.

Sir J. Newport was surprised that the hon. baronet (Sir F. Flood) should be so anxious to perpetuate a statute which never was law in Ireland; and yet in that country, where no such penalties as those inflicted by the 5th of Elizabeth existed, the system of apprenticeships was freely and voluntarily adopted. He thought, on every principle of justice, that the subject was entitled to make use of his abilities and industry in those pursuits most beneficial to his interests.

Sir S. Romilly had been applied to on the subject of the present Bill, by the constituents of two hon. gentlemen who had already delivered their sentiments on the measure this night (Messrs. Protheroe and Davis). He felt the highest respect for the gentlemen who had so applied to him on the subject of the present Bill; but his opinion of the measure being decidedly opposite to theirs, he thought he should not be acting a manly part were he either to abstain from voting on the Bill, or were he to content himself with a silent vote on this occasion. He was satisfied that there were reasons sufficiently strong to support the system of apprenticeships in those trades in which a number of years were requisite to the acquiring a knowledge of them, without the assistance of the law as it now stood. This law, which went to prohibit a man from the exercise of that trade for which he was fit, he therefore thought ought to be repealed. For what was it but to take from a poor man the only property he possessed—his genius and industry—and to drive him into a workhouse; or to force him to abandon his country, and to forsake his wife and family. These were the moral consequences which the House was to look for from a perseverance in the law as it now stood.

Alderman Atkins hoped that some clause might be introduced into the Bill when it was in the committee, that would give sufficient encouragement to the apprentice system; while, at the same time, the abuses of it might be remedied.

Sir F. Flood, seeing the sense of the House against him, withdrew his amendment.