LIVERYMEN'S APPRENTICESHIPS. To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "]
SIR,—You reflect on the Liverymen of London in a way that might come most naturally from some quarters, but is, to many of us, hard to bear from a journal written usually with Christian moderation and justice towards all classes. I allude, for instance, to your charge of the apprenticeships being " false and fraudulent." That the articles are false and formal, much in the sense of a " conge d'elire" to a Dean and Chapter, is not to be disputed ; but the parties to them are no more guilty of deception or " fraud " in the one case than in the other. Many readers of your article would be led to think otherwise.
So far from our two or three annual dinners being " free and pauperising," the " fines " paid by those admitted to the Livery bear some reasonable proportion to their cost,—the fine levied by my Company, for instance, being fifty guineas.
The law is already operative against trustees who "abuse trust funds for their private benefit ;" and surely so unkind and damaging a charge should not take any other form than a We meant, of course, only that the pretence of apprentice. ship is a fraud on the public, not that those who go through the form, intend to deceive any one who is familiar with the custom. In the case of a " cong6 d'elire," the law requires the form, hollow as that form may seem to some. This is not so in the case of these formal apprenticeships.—En. Spectator.]
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