anywhere in England, or in the Fnglish plantations, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month, half to the king, and half to him who shall sue in any court of record. The silkweavers in London had scarce been incorporated a year when they enacted a bye-law restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. It required a particular act of parliament to rescind this bye-law." Seven years seein anciently to have been, all over Europe, the usual term established for the duration of apprenticeships in the greater part of incorporated trades. All such incorporations were anciently called universities; which, indeed, is the proper Latin name for any incorporation whatever. The university of smiths, the university of tailors, &c., are expressions which we commonly meet with in the old charters of ancient towns. When those particular incorporations which are now peculiarly called universities were first established, the term of years which it was necessary to study, in order to obtain the degree of master of arts, appears evidently to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades, of which the incorporations were much more ancient. By the 5th of Elizabeth, commonly called the statute of apprenticeship, it was enacted that no person should for the future exercise any trade, craft, or mystery at that time exercised in England, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least; and what before had been the bye-law of many particular corportions became in England the general and public law of all the trades carried on in market towns. By a strict interpretation of the words, the operation of this statute has been limited to those trades which were established in England before the 5th of Elizabeth, and has never been extended to such as have been introduced since that time. [The statute of apprenticeship was repealed in 1814, by the statute 54th Geo. III., cap. 96. This act did not, however, interfere with any of the existing rights, privileges, or bye-laws of the different legally constituted corporations; but wherever these do not stand in the way, the formation of apprenticeships, and their duration, is now entirely left to be adjusted by the parties themselves.M' Culloch], 54.

THE property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain viola

tion of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the lawgiver lest they should employ an improper person is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive. The institution of long apprenticeships can give no security that insufficient workmanship shall not frequently be exposed to public sale. When this is done it is generally the effect of fraud, and not of inability; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud. Quite different regulations are necessary to prevent this abuse. The sterling mark upon plate, and the stamps upon linen and woollen cloth, give the purchaser much greater security than any statute of apprenticeship. He generally looks at these, but never thinks it worth while to inquire whether the workman had served a seven years' apprenticeship. The institution of long apprenticeships has no tendency to form young people to industry. A journeyman who works by the piece is likely to be industrious, because he derives a benefit from every exertion of his industry. An apprentice is likely to be idle, and almost always is so, because he has no immediate interest to be otherwise. In the inferior employments, the sweets of labour consist altogether in the recompense of labour. They who are soonest in a condition to enjoy the sweets of it are likely soonest to conceive a relish for it, and to acquire the early habit of industry. A young man naturally conceives an aversion to labour, when for a long time he receives no benefit from it. The boys who are put out apprentices from public charities are generally bound for more than the usual number of years, and they generally turn out very idle and worthless. Apprenticeships were altogether unknown to the ancients. The reciprocal duties of master and apprentice make a considerable article

in every modern code. Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. Education would generally in this way be more effectual, and always less tedious and expensive. The master, indeed, would be a loser. He would lose all the wages of the apprentice, which he now saves for seven years altogether. In the end,

perhaps, the apprentice himself would be a loser. In a trade so easily learned he would have more competitors, and his wages, when he came to be a complete workman, would be much less than at present. The same increase of competition would reduce the profits of the masters as well as the wages of the workmen. The trades, the crafts, the mysteries, would all be losers. But the public would be a gainer, the work of all artificers coming in this way much cheaper to market. It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established.-55.

No apprenticeship has ever been thought necessary to qualify for husbandry, the great trade of the country. After what are called the fine arts and the liberal professions, however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and experience.-57.

PEOPLE of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.-59.

THE pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers.

TILL after the middle of the fourteenth century, five marks, containing about as much silver as ten pounds of present money, was, in England, the usual pay of a curate or a stipendiary parish priest, as we find it regulated by the decrees of several different national councils. At the same period fourpence a day, containing the same quantity of silver as a shilling of our present money, was declared to be the pay of a master mason, and threepence a day, equal to ninepence of our present money, that of a journeyman mason. The wages of both these labourers, therefore, supposing them to have been constantly employed, were much superior to those of the curate. By the 12th of Queen Anne, cap. 12, it is declared, "That whereas, for want of sufficient maintenance and encouragement to curates, the cures have in several places been meanly supplied, the bishop is, therefore, empowered to appoint by writing under his hand and seal a sufficient certain stipend or allowance, not exceeding fifty and not less than twenty pounds a year." Forty pounds a year is reckoned at present very good pay for a curate, and notwithstanding this act of parliament, there are many curacies under £20 a year. [By an act passed in 1817, (57th Geo. III., cap. 99.) bishops are empowered to license

curates and assign them salaries, which are in no case to be less than £80 a year, and which are to increase up to £150 a year, according as the population of the parish increases in magnitude.-M'Culloch.] There are journeymen shoemakers in London who earn £40 a year, and there is scarce an industrious workman of any kind in that metropolis who does not earn more than £20. This last sum, indeed, does not exceed what is frequently earned by common labourers in many country parishes. [An act passed in 1812 raised the stipends of such Scotch clergymen as were below £150 a year, exclusive of their houses and glebes, to that sum. It seems, however, to be generally admitted that such an income is inadequate to support a clergyman in his proper station; and that the minimum stipend, exclusive of glebes and houses, should be raised to £250 or £300 a year.-M'Culloch.]—60.

BEFORE the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous. The different governors of the universities, before that time, appear to have often granted licenses to their scholars to beg. In ancient times, before any charities had been established for the education of indigent people to the learned professions, the rewards of eminent teachers appear to have been much more considerable. Isocrates demanded ten minæ, or £33 6s. 8d., from each scholar. When he taught at Athens, he is said to have had an hundred scholars. I understand this to be the number whom he taught at one time, or who attended what we would call one course of lectures: a number which will not appear extraordinary from so great a city to so famous a teacher, who taught too what was at that time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetoric. He must have made, therefore, by each course of lectures, a thousand mine, or £3,333 6s. 8d. A thousand mine, accordingly, is said by Plutarch, in another place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. Many other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes.--61.

THE act of William III., which obliged a poor man to procure a certificate before he could remove from a parish, was repealed in 1795; and it was at the same time declared that no poor persons should afterwards be removable from the parish or place which they inhabited, to the place of their last legal settlement, until they actually became chargeable.M-Culloch, 64.

It is often more difficult for a poor man to pass the artificial boundary of a parish, than an arm of the sea or a ridge of high mountains.-Smith, 65.

To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he chooses to reside is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people of England, however, so jealous of their liberty, but, like the common people of most other countries, never rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now for more than a century together suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy.

THE expenses of actions at law regarding settlements and removals, previously to the change in the poor laws in 1834, were seldom less than from £300,000 to £350,000 a year!— M'Culloch.

THOUGH anciently it was usual to rate wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular orders of the justices of the peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone entirely into disuse. "By the experience of above 400 years," says Dr. Burn, it seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations what in its own nature seems incapable of minute limitation; for if all persons in the same kind of work were to receive equal wages, there would be no emulation, and no room left for industry or ingenuity." Particular acts of parliament, however, still attempt sometimes to regulate wages in particular trades and in particular places. [All laws for the regulation of wages were repealed by the 5th Geo. IV., cap. 95: masters and workmen may now enter into voluntary combinations for the purpose of depressing or raising wages.-M'Culloch.] In ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by rating the price both of provisions and other goods. The assize of bread is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. [The laws relating to the assize and price of bread in London and its environs were repealed by a local act passed in 1815 (55th Geo. III., cap. 19). And those relating to the assize of bread out of London are now very rarely acted upon.-MCulloch.]-Smith.

THE fundamental position laid down by Dr. Smith, that there are certain species of produce that always yield rent, is contradicted by the widest and most comprehensive experience. Were such the case, rents would always exist, whereas they are uniformly unknown in the earlier stages of society. The truth is, that rent is entirely a consequence of the decreasing productiveness of the soils successively brought under cultivation as society advances, or rather of the decreasing