Note A3-7-3 — Chapter III

In Venice, the relations of a workman who had emigrated and refused to return home were imprisoned. If this was of no avail, the emigrant was to be put to death. (Daru, Hist. de V., III, 90.) It is said that this was still the practice in 1754. (Acad. des Sc. mor. et polit., 1866, I, 132.) Florence, in 1419, threatened its subjects who carried on the brocade or silk industry, in foreign countries, with death. Similarly, when the Nürnberg Rothgiessers were prohibited, under pain of the house of correction, showing their mills to a stranger. (Roth, Gesch. des N. Handles, III, 176.) In Belgium, enticing manufacturers of bone lace to emigrate was made punishable. Austrian prohibition for glass-makers, in 1752; for scythe-makers, in 1781. Colbert also approved of the imprisonment of manufacturers desirous to emigrate. (Lettres, etc., II, 568 ff.) By 5 Geo. I., ch. 28, and 23 Geo. II., ch. 13, the soliciting of an artificer to emigrate to foreign countries is punished by one year's imprisonment and £500 fine; and even workmen who do not respond to a call home within six months lose all their reachable property in England, and their capacity to inherit there. Every emigrant had to certify that he was no artificer. The only effect of this law was that the emigration of artificers to the United States was made by the way of Canada; the poorer ones, at most, were kept back by the cost of this circuitous route. Hence the law was repealed in 1825. Compare Edinb. Rev., XXXIX, p. 341 ff.