APPRENTICE (from the French ap prenti, which is from the verb apprendre, to learn) signifies a person who is bound by indenture to serve a master for a cer tain term, and receives, in return for his services, instruction in his master's pro fession, art, or occupation. In addition to this, the master is often bound to pro vide food and clothing for the apprentice, and sometimes to pay him small wages, but the master often receives a premium. In England the word was once used to denote those students of the common law in the societies of the inns of court who —not having completed their professional education by ten years' study in those so cieties, at which time they were qualified to leave their inns and to execute the full office of an advocate, upon being called by writ to take upon them the degree of serjeant-at-law--were yet of sufficient standing to be allowed to practise in all courts of law except the court of Com mon Pleas. This denomination of ap prentice (in law Latin apprenticii ad legem nobiliores, apprenticii ad barras, or simply apprenticii ad legem) appears to have continued until the close of the six teenth century, after which this term fell into disuse, and we find the same class of advocates designated, from their pleading without the bar, as outer barristers, now shortened into the well-known term bar risters. (Spelman, Gloss. ad minim ; Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. i. 23 ; iii. 27.) The system of apprenticeship in mo dern Europe is said to have grown up in conjunction with the system of associating and incorporating handicraft trades in the twelfth century. The corporations, it is said, were formed for the purpose of re sisting the oppression of the feudal lords, and it is obvious that the union of arti sans in various bodies must have enabled them to act with more power and effect. The restraint of free competition, the maintenance of peculiar privileges. and the limitation of the numbers of such as should participate in them, were the main results to which these institutions tended; and for these purposes a more effective instrument than apprenticeship could hardly be found. To exercise a
trade, it was necessary to be free of the company or fraternity of that trade ; and as the principal if not the only mode of acquiring this freedom in early times was by serving an apprenticeship to a member of the body, it became easy to limit the numbers admitted to this privilege, either indirectly by the length of apprenticeship required, or more immediately by limit ing the number of apprentices to be taken by each master. So strict in some in stances were these regulations, that no master was allowed to take as an appren tice any but his own son. In agriculture, apprenticeship, though in some compara tively later instances encouraged by posi tive laws, has never prevailed to any great extent. The tendency to association in deed is not strong among the agricultural population, combination being, to the scat tered inhabitants of the country, incon venient and often impracticable ; whereas the inhabitants of towns are by their very position invited to it.
Subsequently to the twelfth century, apprenticeship has prevailed in almost every part of Europe—in France, Ger many, .Italy, and Spain, and probably in other countries. It is asserted by Adam Smith, that seven years seem once to have been all over Europe the usual term established for the duration of apprentice ships in most trades. There seems, however, to have been no settled rule on this subject, for there is abundant evi dence to show that the custom in this respect varied not only in different coun tries, but in different incorporated trades in the same town.
Iu Italy, the Latin term for the con tract of apprenticeship was acconventatio. From an old form of an Italian instru ment, given by Beier in his learned work De Collegiis °Allem, it appears that the contract, which in most respects closely resembled English indentures of appren ticeship, was signed by the father or other friend of the boy who was to be bound, and not by the boy himself, who testified his consent to the agreement merely by being present.