e the law of the land, and it was enacted that no
person should exercise any "trade or mystery" without having served a
seven years' apprenticeship. In no place did the apprentices become so
formidable by their numbers and organization as in London. During the
Great Rebellion they took an active part as a political body, and were
conspicuous after the Restoration by being frequently engaged in
tumults. It was probably owing to this circumstance, quite as much as to
economic considerations of freedom of trade, that the act of Elizabeth
never found much favour with the courts of law. Soon after the Great
Rebellion we find the apprentice laws strongly reprobated by the judges,
who endeavoured, on the theory that the act of Elizabeth could apply to
no trades which were not in existence at its date, to limit its
operation as far as possible. Such limitation of the act gave rise to
many absurd anomalies and inconsistencies, e.g. that a coachmaker could
not make his own wheels but must buy them of a wheelwright, while the
latter might make both wheels and coaches, because coach-making was not
a trade in England when the act of Elizabeth was passed. For the like
reason the great textile and metal manufactures which arose at
Manchester and Birmingham were held exempt from the operation of the
statute. Concurrently with the dislike to the apprentice laws which such
anomalies generated, the doctrines of Adam Smith, that all monopolies or
restrictions on the freedom of trade were injurious to the public
interest, had gradually been making their way, and notwithstanding much
opposition an act was passed in 1814 by which the statute of Elizabeth,
in so far as it enacts that no person shall engage in any trade without
a seven years' apprenticeship, was wholly repealed. The effect of this
act was to give every person the fullest right to exercise any
occupation or calling of a mechanical or trading kind for which he
deemed himself qualified.

Apprenticeship, therefore, which was formerly a compulsory, now became a
voluntary contract. In the case of the learned professions the
principles and theories which gave birth to corporations with
monopolies, and required apprenticeship or its equivalents,
have--contrary to what has taken place in trade--been not only
maintained but intensified; that is to say, not only have such bodies
retained and even extended in some cases their exclusive privileges, but
in general no one is allowed to practi