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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 ob ject of these regulations.

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

ship of the poor, which, though, in the highest degree interesting and worthy of the attention of the House, are yet in some measure foreign to the immediate object of their inquiry. They cannot, however, avoid mentioning the very early age at which many of these children are bound apprentices. The evils of the system of these distant removals, at all times severe, and aggravating the miseries of poverty, are yet felt more acutely, and with a greater degree of aggravation, in the case of children of six or seven years of age, who are removed from the care of their parents and relations at that tender time of life; and are in many cases prematurely subjected to a laborious employment, frequently very injurious to their health, and generally highly so to their morals, and from which they cannot hope to be set free under a period of fourteen or fifteen years, as, with the exception of two parishes only, in the metropolis, they invariably are bound to the age of twenty-one years.

Without entering more at large into the inquiry, your Committee submit, that enough has been shewn to call the attention of the House to the practicability of finding employment for parish apprentices, within a certain distance from their own homes, without the necessity of having recourse to a practice so much at variance with humanity.

REPORT

FROM THE COMMITTEE ON LAWS RELATING ΤΟ THE MANUFACTURE, SALE, AND ASSIZE OF BREAD.

Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, the 6th of June,

1815.

THE COMMITTEE appointed to inquire into the State of the existing Laws which regulate the Manufacture and Sale of Bread, and whether it is expedient to continue the Assize thereon un-, der any and what Regulations, and to report the Matter thereof as it should appear to them to the House, together with their Observations and Opinion thereupon; and to whom the Petition of several Bakers of the City and Suburbs of the City of Canterbury, was referred ;

Have proceeded in pursuance of the orders of the House to examine and compare the statute called 'Assisa Panis et Cervisiæ,' made in the fifty-first year of Henry III. with the ordinances made in the reign of Edward I. the twelfth year of Henry VII. the thirty-fourth of Elizabeth, and the Book of Assize published by Order of Council in the year 1638.

Your Committee find, that the fifty-first of Henry III. was (at the petition of the Bakers of Coventry) an exemplification of certain ordinances of Assize made in the reign of King John, the purpose of which appears to have 202 been

been to regulate the charges and profits of Bakers; it being stated, immediately after the specification of the table of assize in the Act, that then a baker in every quarter of wheat (as it is proved by the King's bakers) may gain "fourpence and the bran, and two loaves for advantage; for three servants three halfpence, for two lads one halfpenny, in salt one halfpenny, for kneading one halfpenny, for candle k one farthing, for wood two"pence, for his bultel (or bolting) three halfpence," in all sixpence three farthings, and two loaves for advantage.

Your Committee observing the allowance thus stated to be inade to the bakers, was partly in money and partly in bread, proceeded to examine in what way the table of assize was constructed for the purpose of ensuring to them that allowance; and they found, that of eight sorts of bread which were included in the table, the sixth is that which has been called Wheaten Bread in the subsequent Assize Laws. Of this bread it is stated in the table, "when wheat shall sell at 12d. the quarter, the farthing loaf shall weigh 101. 11s. od.," which weight (as was usual in those times) being expressed in pounds shillings and pence, your Committee find to be the Saxon or Tower pound, which is to the Troy pound, in the proportion of fifteen to sixteen; and accordingly, when the Troy weight was established in 18th of Henry VIII., the tables of assize were duly adjusted in that proportion. Subsequently, in the 13th of Charles I., when the avoirdupois weight was introduced, the tables

were again adjusted according to the known principle, that seventythree ounces Troy equal eighty ounces avoirdupois.

From which statement, it is apparent, that the quantity of wheaten bread expressed in the Statute by the denomination of 101. 11s, Gd., is equal to 10-575 lbs. Troy, and 87087 lbs. Avoirdupois; as one loaf of this weight was to be sold for a farthing when a quarter of wheat was at 12d. it follows, that forty-eight such loaves (which weigh 418-02 lbs. Avoirdupois) was the exact quantity of bread which was to be sold for the price of a quarter of wheat; whatever bread could be made from it over and above 418 lbs. was for the baker's advantage, and this is stated in the Statute to have been proved, on experiment, to have amounted to two loaves; and if these were peck loaves, 452 lbs. 14 oz. of wheaten bread was the quantity obtained by the King's bakers from a quarter of wheat,

Your Committee proceeded to examine, whether the quantity of bread which can be made from a quarter of wheat, is such as to justify the above interpretation of the Statute; and they found in the Report of a Committee of the House which sat in 1774, the detail of many accurate experiments upon that subject; but your Committec beg leave to refer to the record of an experiment which was reported to the House by the Committee on the High Price of Provisions in 1800, by which it appears, that the flour from a quarter of wheat weighing only 55 lbs. a bushel, and dressed after the mode now in use for preparing flour for the London mark

et,

et, was baked into 433 lbs. of in which Assize Book it is de

Wheaten bread, and 25 lbs. of household bread. And your Committee, relying confidently upon the accuracy of that experiment, are thereby assured, that when the baker was forced to sell no more than 418 lbs. of bread for the price of quarter of wheat, he really obtained in surplus bread the two loaves for advantage which the Statute professed to allow him; although it is probable the bread was not of quite so fine a quality as the wheaten bread now in

use.

The money allowance appears by its specified application in the Statute, to have been for the purpose only of repaying the baker's charges for grinding and baking. The advantage loaves were for his maintenance and profit; but your Committee do not find the mode is exactly specified by which the money allowance was paid in later times the mode of payment was described at length in the book published by Order of Council in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and which refers to a former Book of Assize as follows: "In the reign of Henry VII., the bakers were allowed two shillings for their charges in baking a quarter of wheat and the bran, as plainly appeareth in the said old Assize Book, which hath relation to the Statute of Winchester aforesaid,

clared in what manner the said two shillings is to be allowed; that is to say, when wheat was at 12s. the quarter, the baker should bake at 14s. the quarter; when at 14s. he is to bake at 16s. the quarter; as in the said book is to be seen, and is to follow at the same rate at what price soever wheat is at the quarter." As this mode has been in use down to the present time, and is above referred to as having been long established, it is probably that which was in the earliest times adopted.

Your Committee proceeded to trace the successive alterations which had taken place in these two allowances to the bakers, and with regard to the payment in money, they found it was from time to time increased and altered: in the twelfth of Henry VII. it was raised to two shillings per quarter; and your Committee beg leave to point out, that a large portion of this allowance appears to have been appropriated to the baker and his family, who by fiftyone of Henry III., were provided for by the advantage loaves.

"Anno 1405, twelfth of Henry VII., and as the said Book of Assize declareth," "when the best wheat was sold at 7s., the second at 6s. Cd., and the third at 6s. the quarter,

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But as 418lbs. was still the quantity of bread to be sold for the price of a quarter of wheat, your Committee are led to believe that the allowance in bread no longer continued to be noticed.

During the reigns of James I., and Charles I., the money allowance was at 6s.; by the statute of eighth of Anne, the money allowance was raised to 12s., but by a slight error in the calculation of the tables, the weight of bread was reduced to 417 lbs.; and as this statute continued in force down to the year 1758, this accidental variation is the only one which for the long period of 556 years took place in the quantity of bread which was to be sold for the price of a quarter of wheat.

The Act of 31 Geo. 2, repealed the 8th of Anne, and it contained a table of assize constructed on a principle differing from all those which preceded it; instead of 417 lbs. the bakers were to sell no more than 365 lbs. of wheaten bread for the price of a quarter of wheat, and 52lbs. of bread were by these means added to the two advantage loaves originally granted, an alteration which could not fail materially to raise the price of bread; and your committee therefore beg leave to point out its practical result. By the table in Sth of Anne, when wheat was at 845. and the baker's allowance at 12s. the quarter, 4lbs. 5 oz. S dr. being a quartern loaf of wheaten bread, was to be sold for one shilling..

By the table of Geo. II. when wheat was equally at S4s. and the baker's allowance at 195. the

quarter, the quartern loaf of wheaten bread was to be sold for 134d. But as there is nothing in the act itself, or in any of the records of the House, which your Committee have examined, which in any way notices the important alteration above pointed out, your Committee have no means of explaining the grounds on which it was made.

The operation of the law, however, and the bigher price of bread it occasioned, gave rise to much inquiry; and in the 15th of the King, an Act was passed, the object of which was to restore the bread laws to their former footing. This statute contained a re-enactment of the table of the Sth Anne, and contained also specific directions for dressing the flour of which the bread was to be made; but as these direc tions were in themselves contradictory, and as the profits to the bakers were by the construction of the table so largely reduced, they found means to prevent the possibility of putting it in force in London, although an attempt was made to do so in the year 1800.

Your Committee having proceeded thus far in their examination of the tables of assize, by which, according to the market-price of wheat (and latterly of flour) the price of bread was to be set, proceeded to inquire in what way that market-price was directed to be ascertained; and on this subject they found nothing earlier than the statute of Anne: there'n it is directed generally, "That the magistrates, in setting the assize of bread, are to have re

spect

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