In process of time, the Deep Cut was finished, and announced to be formally opened on a certain day, when the tide should be favourable for showing it off to the greatest advantage. It was thought that a damp would be cast over the proceedings by the present unprosperous state of the coal trade, which seemed to render it less probable than it had at first appeared that the undertaking would soon repay its expenses. The war still continued, and with it the practice of impressment; so that colliers could not be manned but at a very high cost. Wages in colliers were now just four times what were given in king’s ships. The difficulty mentioned by uncle Christoper of getting colliers worked up the Thames was also greater than ever; and the price of coal rose so much that the demand slackened, week by week. This was an awkward state of things in which to begin a grand new experiment; but the cost of the Deep Cut had been already incurred, and the only thing to be done was to make use of it, as fast as possible. Some persons wondered that Mr. Otley, who loved a joke, did not make use of this season of adversity for ridiculing a scheme whose execution he had been unable to prevent. No light sayings of his upon the matter were going the round of his neighbourhood; and such members of the Company as had the honour of his acquaintance, were surprised that they had not yet been jeered by him about the large attendance they were likely to have at the opening, from the great number of people about the collieries who were out of employment. But Mr. Otley was quite as loyally occupied in another way—in attempting to draw tighter the restraints of the apprenticeship laws, and to extend the infliction to the flourishing towns which had grown into their prosperous maturity exempt from the privilege, or curse, (whichever it might be called,) of a law of apprenticeship. It was quite the fashion, just now, among loyal men, to petition after the manner which the rector had adopted; and an opposite fashion spread, among those who had been tripped up in the ‘old paths,’ of going down to the origin of things, and mounting up to their consequences. These latter began to discover not only how impracticable was the apprenticeship law of Elizabeth, how nearly it went to subvert the common law, how it could retain even a nominal force only by evasion; but they saw that if parliament should be prevailed on to enforce it afresh, the next step of the loyal might be to revive the old statutes, that he who should sell abroad sheep, rams or lambs, should lose all he had, then part with his left hand, and for a second offence suffer death; or that a like penalty should be made once more to visit an exporter of fullers’ earth; or of tobacco-pipe clay, because such clay is like fullers’ earth.