APPRENTICE is a person described in law-books as a species of servant, 'and called A. from the French verb apprendre, to learn, because he is bound by indenture to serve a master for a certain term, receiving in return for his services instruction in, or learning his master's profession, art, or trade; the master, upon the other hand, contracting to instruct the A., and, according to the nature of the agreement, to provide food and cloth ing for the A., and to pay him small wages. Sometimes a premium is paid by the A., or oa his behalf, to the master. By a provision of the 5 Eliz. c. 4, which remained in force until a recent period, it was in general required that every person exercising a trade in England should have previously served as A. to it for 7 years; but by later statutes that provision was abolished, with a saving of the customs and by-laws in Lon don and other corporations; and the term of apprenticeship is now determined by the mutual convenience of the contracting parties. By the municipal act, 5 and 6 Will. IV. c. 76, s. 14 (which does not, however, extend to London), all such customs and by-laws as had the effect of prohibiting trades and occupations to persons who had not served as apprentices, were also done away. Apprentices, in general, are bound out by their friends, though with their own consent, testified by their executing the indentures, without which the transaction is not binding. To the same effect it is the rule of the Scotch law that although a pupil—that is, a boy under 14 or a girl under 12 years of age—may be a party to an indenture as an A., yet lie must have the concurrence of a parent or guardian, who alone can be liable to the master for the A.'s non-performance of the engagement. An A., on the other hand, who has passed the years of pupilarity, may effectually enter into an indenture by which lie will be personally bound. It has been decided in England that the express assent of an infant A. to the indentures is essential to the contract; and therefore indentures of apprenticeship which had been executed by a father and master, but not by the A. himself, were held invalid. But an infant may bind himself A., because it is for his benefit; for the same reason, however,
he cannot himself dissolve the contract. When an A. is bound to two partners, on the death of one of them the apprenticeship is at an end.
There is a class who are bound out by the guardians of the poor, and are called parish, apprentices, whose binding takes place under different circumstances. For the children of poor persons might formerly, even without becoming parties to the indentures, be apprenticed out by the overseers with the consent of two justices (and may now by the guardians, without such consent), till 21 years of age, to such persons as are thought fitting; and these persons were formerly also compellable to take them. But by 7 and 8 Viet. c. 101, s. 13, the reception of any poor child as an A. is no longer compulsory. A variety of statutes regulate the manner in which parish apprentices are to be bound, assigned, registered, and maintained; a subject which is besides now placed under the paramount control of the local government board, who make new rules, from time to time, as they may think fit; and provisions are made by which the justices of the peace are empowered to settle disputes between such apprentices and their masters, and to discharge the former from their indentures, upon reasonable cause shown. Similar powers belong also to the justices, in the case of apprentices in general. (Stephen's Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 240, fourth edition.) It has been decided in England that a corporation cannot make a by-law limiting the number of apprentices which each member shall take, because such a regulation is deemed contrary to the laws of the land.
A mere agreement does not constitute an apprenticeship; there must be ,regular indentures formally executed. By statute 33 and 34 Viet. c. 97, indentures of appren ticeship in which the full suns or sums of money received,given, paid, secured, or contracted for, are not truly inserted, are void. But the act does not apply to cases i where the sum is inserted in the indentures, though it is a less sum than that which was originally agreed for, and the reduction made to diminish the amount of the stamp duty.