§ Sir J. Graham,in asking leave to bring in a bill to explain the acts for the better regulation of certain apprentices, said that by the law as it at present stood, when masters had received premiums with their apprentices, magistrates had the power of exercising a certain jurisdiction over the parties; but by a judgment recently made in the Court of Queen's Bench it appeared that where no premiums were paid the magistrates had no such power. In consequence of this state of the law the power of masters over their apprentices must be necessarily greatly relaxed, and the object of his intended bill was to remove this defect in the law, and to give magistrates power over those cases, even where no premiums had been paid by apprentices.
§ Leave given.
§ Bill brought in and read a first time.