-turns made by each master, or by the overseer, as well as the names of such masters as have not given any answers at all, or unsatisfactory ones; but they conceive that it might be invidious to do so, especially as those details would make no difference in the state of the question which it is their object to bring before the consideration of the House. They therefore abstain from inserting any such returns in their Appendix, satisfied that the House will give them credit for the reason of such omission. They think it right, however, to state generally, that of the children bound in ten years, the following is the proportion of the different trades and employments: Silk Throwsters 118.

Silk Manufacturers...... 26

18

Flax Spinners

...

5

8

26

433

2,026

gibly accounted for by the persons to whom they were bound, or by the overseers where the masters have become bankrupts

Of the number comprised under the last head, consisting of 433, some few of the masters have sent a return, but without giving an account of the whole of the apprentices; so that it may be fairly judged that one-third of these cannot be accounted for at all.

Your Committee having abstracted the whole list of parish apprentices bound intothecountry, might make this Report more full, by enumerating the particular re

Earthenware Manufac

Cotton Spinners.
Cotton Weavers
Cotton Manufacturers 771
Cotton Twist Manufac-

It appears by the returns from the metropolis, that the children bound to manufacturers in the country have generally been apprenticed on the same day, in numbers of from five or six to forty or fifty. They have not unfrequently been taken back to their parents, and sometimes after having been bound, have been assigned to another master. In the parish of Bermondsey, out of twenty-five apprenticed to manufacturers, sixteen, it is said, did not go, but no reason is given for -it; and in several instances, after the children have been taken into the country, they have been returned to the parish, in consequence of the surgeon having pronounced them unsound. It appears also, that of the whole number of parish apprentices, included in the above returns, no less a proportion than threefourths have been bound to masters connected with the cottonmanufacture. Most of the remarks, therefore, which they conceive it their duty to make, will be more directly applicable to that branch of employment; though many of their general observations, as to the impolicy of removing children to a considerable distance from their parents, as well as from those whose duty it is to see that they are properly taken care of and treated, are equally applicable to all profes

sions.

In considering this subject, it is necessary to advert more particularly to the causes and circumstances attending the original appointment of a committee. A Bill having been brought into the House four sessions ago, at the desire and under the direction of one of the most populous manu

facturing districts of this kingdom, the professed object of which was to prohibit the binding of parish apprentices to above a certain distance from the abode of their parents, and making other regulations in the management of them, some of the parishes of the metropolis menaced an opposition to the Bill; as taking from them the means of disposing of the children of the poor belonging to them, in the manner in which they had before been accustomed to do. It was therefore judged expedient to ascertain the extent of the practice which had prevailed, in order to form a judgment of the necessity of continuing it; and with that view, as well as for the reasons before-mentioned, these returns were called for. There was also another reason for confining the returns to the metropolis and its vicinity, exclusive of the facility which the registers, kept as abovementioned, afforded for that purposé.

In the populous districts of England, whether that population is caused by manufactures or by other employments, the same causes which produce it provide support for the inhabitants of all ages, by various occupations adopted to their means. Thus, in manufacturing districts, the children are early taught to gain their subsistence by the different branches of those manufactures. In districts where collieries or other mines abound, they are accustomed almost from their infancy to employments under ground, which tend to train and inure them to the occupation of their ancestors: but in London the lower class of the population is not of that nature, but

is composed of many different descriptions, consisting of servants in and out of place, tradesmen, artisans, labourers, widows, and beggars, who being frequently destitute of the means of providing for themselves, are de pendant on their parishes for relief, which is seldom bestowed without the parish claiming the exclusive right of disposing, at their pleasure, of all the children of the person receiving relief. The system of apprenticeship is therefore resorted to of necessity, and with a view of getting rid of the burthen of supporting so many individuals; and as it is probably carried to a greater extent there than any where else, for the reasons here stated, your Committee has been enabled to form an opinion, without the necessity of referring to any other part of the kingdom, whether it could be discontinued, without taking away from the parishes the means of disposing of their poor children. It certainly does appear to your Committee, that this purpose might be attained, without the violation of humanity, in separating children forcibly, and conveying them to a distance from their parents, whether those parents be deserving or undeserving. The peculiar circumstances of the metropolis, already alluded to, may at first seem to furnish an argument in favour of a continuance of this practice; but it can hardly be a matter of doubt that apprentices, to the number of two hundred, which is the yearly number bound on the average of ten years before mentioned, might with the most trifling possible exertion on the VOL. LVII.

part of the parish officers, be annually bound to trades and domestic employments, within such a distance as to admit of occa sional intercourse with a parent, and (what is perhaps of more consequence) the superintendance of the officers of the parish by which they were bound. That this is not attended with much difficulty seems evident, from the fact that many parishes have never followed the practice of binding their poor children to a distance, though quite as numerous as those in which this practice has prevailed; and that some parishes which had begun it, have long discontinued it.

In making these observations, your Committee beg to be under. stood as not extending them to the sea service, in favour of which they make a special reservation, on account of considerations of the highest political importance connected with the maritime interests of the country. They therefore carefully abstain from recommending any interference with the law as it now stands, which admits of binding parish apprentices to the king's or merchant's naval service.

The system of binding parish apprentices, in the manner in which they are usually bound, to a distance from their parents and relations, and from those parish officers whose duty it is to attend to their moral and physical state, is indeed highly objectionable; but the details and the consequences are very little known, except to those persons to whom professional employment, local situation, or accident, may have afforded the means of 20

inquiry and information on the subject. There are, without doubt, instances of masters, who in some degree compensate to children for the estrangement which frequently takes place at a very early age from their parents, and from the nurses and women to whom they are accustomed in the Workhouses of London, and who pay due and proper attention to the health, education, and moral and religious conduct of their apprentices; but these exceptions to the too general rule, by no means shake the opinion of your Committee, as to the general impolicy of such a system.

The consideration of the inconvenience and expense brought on parishes, by binding apprentices from a distance, is of no weight, when compared with the more important one of the inhumanity of the practice: but it must not be kept out of sight, that the Magistrates of the West Riding of Yorkshire, or of Lancashire, who are of all others the most conversant with the subject, may in vain pass resolutions, as they have done, declaring the impolicy of binding parish apprentices in the manner in which they are usually bound, and attempting to make regulations with a view to their better treatment, if these wholesome regulations can be entirely done away by the act of two Magistrates for Middlesex or Surrey, who can, without any notice or previous intimation, defeat these humane objects, by binding scores or even hundreds of children to manufacturers in a distant county, and thus increase the very evil which it has been endeavoured to check or prevent. Indeed in so

slovenly and careless a manner is this duty frequently performed, and with so little attention to the future condition of the children bound, that in frequent instances the Magistrates have put their signatures to indentures not executed by the parties. Two of these indentures have been submitted to the inspection of your Committee, purporting to bind a boy and a girl from a parish in Southwark, to a cotton Manufacturer in Lancashire, and though signed by two Justices for the county of Surrey, neither dated nor executed by the parish officers, nor by the master to whom the children were bound. Under these indentures, however, they served; and on the failure of their master about two years after this binding was supposed to have taken place, these poor children, with some hundreds more, were turned adrift on the world, one of them being at the age of nine, and the other of ten years.

It is obvious that these considerations apply equally to the assignment of parish apprentices as to their original binding, and therefore the restriction of distance, proposed in the latter case, should be extended to all the parish apprentices, who during the term of their apprenticeship are assigned to another master; nor should any master have power to remove his apprentice beyond the limited distance, as such power would have a direct and immediate tendency to defeat the object of these regulations.

Your Committee forbear to en ter into many details connected with the subject of apprentice