[353] Parliamentary Debates, Series I, Cols. 423-25, Vol. XXVII.
[354] Parliamentary Debates, Series I, Vol. XXVII, Cols. 563-74.
[355] Parliamentary Debates, Series I, Vol. XXVII, Cols. 879-884.
[356] The apprenticeship regulations in the woollen industries had been set aside by Acts of Parliament, 1803 and 1809.
14. Resolutions of the Watchmakers on Apprenticeship [Report of Committee on Petitions of the Watchmakers, 1817 (VI)], 1817.
1. That the obvious intention of our ancestors, in enacting the statute of the 5 Elizabeth, cap. 4, was to produce and maintain a competent number and perpetual succession of masters and journeymen, of practical experience, to promote, secure, and render permanent the prosperity of the national arts and manufactures, honestly wrought by their ability and talents, inculcated by a mechanical education, called a seven years' apprenticeship; whereby according to the memorable words of the statute itself "it will come to pass, that the same law (being duly executed) should banish idleness, advance husbandry, and yield unto the hired person, both in time of scarcity and in time of plenty, a convenient proportion of wages."
2. That it is by apprenticeships, that the practitioners in the arts and manufactures attain the high degree of perfection, whereby British productions have arrived at the great estimation in which they were heretofore held in foreign markets.
8. That the apprenticed artisans have, collectively and individually, an unquestionable right to expect the most extended protection from the Legislature, in the quiet and exclusive use and enjoyment of their several and respective arts and trades, which the law has already conferred upon them as a property, as much as it has secured the property of the stockholder in the public funds; and it is clearly unjust to take the whole of the ancient established property and rights of any one class of the community, unless, at the same time, the rights and property of the whole commonwealth should be dissolved, and parcelled out anew for the public good.
10. That in consequence of too minute a division of labour, injudiciously allowed in several manufactures, the workmen employed are not enabled to make throughout any one article however simple, or even to maintain themselves by their industry.
11. That the unlimited or promiscuous introduction of various descriptions of persons without apprenticeship into the manufactures occasions a surplus of manufacturing poor, and an unnecessary competition, ruinous to the commercial capital and industry of the nation; because the overflow of goods causes all the productions of the manufacturies to fall in price, and be sold to foreigners for less money than they cost in making; which deficiencies are necessarily made up by the ruin of the master manufacturers, bankruptcies, and dividends to creditors; and are the cause of increased parochial and other rates, thus necessarily created, for the support of the poor workmen, who are deprived of the fair price of their honest labour.