Note 88 — CHAP. XI.

It is to be feared that much evil arises from the want of attention on the part of Masters among the superior classes of Tradesmen with respect to their apprentices, who too seldom consider the morals of their apprentices as a matter in which they have any concern.—It is even the practice to allow apprentices a certain sum of money weekly, for the purpose of enabling them to provide themselves out of doors, and to prevent the trouble of boarding them in the house. If it were possible for a Master, after exerting all his ingenuity, to invent one mode more likely than another to ruin his apprentices, it is by adopting this plan. If he means to subject himself to great risques with respect to the security of his property, he will permit his apprentice, at the age of puberty when open to seduction, to be at large in this great Town, where he is liable to be assailed by swindlers, cheats, and sharpers, who, availing themselves of the inexperience of youth, may corrupt the mind, and give it a wrong bias. The dangers arising from allowing apprentices to victual out of doors, extend much farther than masters are generally aware of: and they who suffer it do great injury to themselves, and even great injustice to their apprentices, whose morals they are virtually, at least, bound to preserve pure. This is not to be expected where apprentices are not under the eye of the master at Meal-times. Their Sundays, in such cases, are their own, which they waste in idleness, not seldom in water-parties on the River, where they are introduced into low and bad company, which gives frequently a taint to their manners of the most injurious nature. The result is, that their master, without reflecting that he himself was the cause of their idleness, withdraws his confidence, and turns them adrift after their time expires, if not before; and in the end ruin, as might well be expected, inevitably ensues.