Note 109 — Chapter I

White’s Digest of all the laws at present in existence respecting Masters and Workpeople, 1824, p. 59. Place wrote to Wakefield, January 2, 1814: “The affair of Serjeant Onslow partly originated with me, but I had no suspicion it would be taken up and pushed as vigorously as it has been and is likely to be” (Life of Francis Place, by Prof. Graham Wallas, p. 159).

The proceedings in this matter can be best traced in the House of Commons Journals for 1813 and 1814, vols. lxviii. and lxix.; and in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, vols. xxv. and xxvii. The master’s case is given in a pamphlet, The Origin, Object, and Operation of the Apprentice Laws, 1814, 26 pp., preserved in the Pamphleteer, vol. iii. The Resolutions of the Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen of the Cities of London and Westminster on the Statute 5 Eliz. c. 4, 1814, 4 pp., gives the contrary view (B.M. 1882, d. 2). The contemporary argument for freedom is expressed in An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, by G. Chalmers, 1810; see Cunningham, 1903, vol. ii. p. 660. The Nottingham Library possesses a unique copy of the Articles and General Regulations of a Society for obtaining Parliamentary Relief, and the Encouragement of Mechanics in the Improvement of Mechanism, printed at Nottingham in 1813. This appears to have been a federation of framework knitters’ societies, and possibly others, for Parliamentary action, as well as trade protection; and its establishment in 1813 was perhaps connected with the movement for the revival of the Apprenticeship Laws.