“We whose names are hereunto subscribed being members of the Weavers Society, and contributed or promised to contribute to their Box, do hereby engage that we will quit the said Box; and neither by ourselves or (_sic_) any person for us, pay towards supporting it, nor have any further concern therein.”[171] In the following month the charge already referred to was delivered by Lord Mansfield, and in October a notice was published setting forth that “The Manufacturers in the Check Trade having found on Enquiry that the principal Boxes are destroyed, and the collections or contributions ceased, Work will now be delivered throughout the Town, and the Weavers may apply where they choose as usual.”[172] [Footnote 171: 25th June 1758.] [Footnote 172: _Ibid._, 17th October 1758.] In the meantime, however, it appears that the threatened apprehensions had been effected, and at the Lancaster Spring Assizes in 1759 thirteen check-weavers from Manchester, two from Pendleton, two from Salford, and one from Rusholme, were charged with “having unlawfully met and assembled together and illegally and unjustly combined and confederated that they would not work at less than 2s. the piece above the usual wage or price of eighty yards check.”[173] At the trial a plea for lenity was put in, and, as the weavers conducted themselves in a correct manner, the only penalty imposed was a fine of 1s. each. In his address to them, Lord Mansfield suggested that they had been drawn into the combination by designing men, and pointed out the danger of combinations in raising wages above what had been customary and what the trade would bear, thus driving capital away. His remarks on the apprenticeship clauses of the Elizabethan Act deserve notice, seeing that they were made more than half-a-century before the clauses were repealed: “If none must employ, or be employed, in any branch of trade, but who have served a limited number of years to that branch, the particular trade will be lodged in few hands, to the danger of the public, and the liberty of setting up trades, and the foundations of the present flourishing condition of Manchester will be destroyed. In the infancy of trade, the Act of Queen Elizabeth might be well calculated for public weal, but now when it is grown to that perfection we see it, it might perhaps be of utility to have those laws repealed, as tending to cramp and tie down that knowledge it was first necessary to obtain by rule.” In conclusion, the Judge admonished the check-weavers to “Go home and sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto you.”[174] [Footnote 173: _Letter to a Friend_, App. VIII.] [Footnote 174: _Manchester Mercury_, 3rd April 1759.]