APPRENTICE (from apprendre, to learn), one who is bound by covenant to serve a tradesman or artificer a certain time, upon condition of the master’s instructing him in his art or mystery.

By the common law, every person is left at liberty to follow whatever trade or employment may be agreeable to him. But as it was supposed that great injury would result to the public if unqualified persons were to exercise the various crafts and mysteries connected with the mechanical trades, it was specially provided, by the 5th Eliz., that no person should exercise any art or craft unless he had previously qualified himself for it by a regular apprenticeship, under a penalty of L.400 for every month. Considerable doubts were always entertained as to the trades to which this statute applied; and as the courts of law do not seem generally to have favoured the principle of the statute, their decisions tended rather to confine than to extend the restriction. It was at length agreed that the law was only applicable to such trades as existed at the time of passing the act, and to such also as implied some mystery or craft. The operation of the statute was also held to be limited to market-towns, it being supposed necessary for the convenience of the inhabitants of country villages, that the same person should exercise different trades, even though he had not been regularly bred by a seven years’ apprenticeship to each. These various limitations of the statute gave rise to many very absurd distinctions, which plainly showed how very unsuitable this antiquated law was to tĥe present advanced state of the mechanical trades. It was found, for example, that a coachmaker could neither himself make nor employ journeymen to make his coach-wheels, but that it behoved him to buy them of a master wheelwright, this last trade having been exercised in England before the 5th Eliz. But a wheelwright, though he has never served an apprenticeship to a coachmaker, might either himself make, or employ journeymen, to make coaches, the trade of a coachmaker not having been prohibited by the statute, as not being exercised in England at the time it was passed. All the great manufactures which, in modern times, have arisen throughout England—in Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Wolverhampton—were on this account exempted from the restrictive operation of this law; and the perfection to which they have arrived seems a practical proof of its inutility for tĥe encouragement of trade.

The effects of those restrictions imposed by the 5th Eliz. were at length felt to be so injurious, that, in the year 1813, petitions were presented to parliament from various manufacturing towns for a repeal of certain parts of this exceptionable statute; and the 54th Geo. III. was accordingly passed, by which all the penalties and prohibitions imposed by 5th Eliz. on those who should exercise any trade or mystery, unless qualified by six or seven years’ apprenticeship, were repealed. That part of the statute was also repealed which enacted that no person should become an apprentice except in strict conformity to the provisions of the 5th Eliz., and which rendered all indentures contrary to this act null and void. In opposition to this, it was provided that all indentures or covenants which would otherwise be valid, should now be valid, any thing in the 5th Eliz. to the contrary notwithstanding.