"God is great!" exclaimed the sultan. "You are a beautiful people." Clapperton had succeeded in putting a beautiful illusion upon the sultan's imagination, as some English writers have endeavoured to do among the civilized nations of the earth. If the sultan had been taken to England, to see the freedom of the "servants" in the workshops, perhaps he would have exclaimed—"God is great! Slaves are plenty." The condition of the apprentices in the British workshops is at least as bad as that of the children in the factories. According to the second report of the commissioners appointed by Parliament, the degrading system of involuntary apprenticeship—in many cases without the consent of parents—and merely according to the regulations of the brutal guardians of the workhouses, is general. The commissioners say— "That in some trades, those especially requiring skilled workmen, these apprentices are bound by legal indentures, usually at the age of fourteen, and for a term of seven years, the age being rarely younger, and the period of servitude very seldom longer; but by far the greater number are bound _without any prescribed legal forms_, and in almost all these cases they are required to serve their masters, _at whatever age they may commence their apprenticeship, until they attain the age of twenty-one_, in some instances in employments in which there is nothing deserving the name of skill to be acquired, and in other instances in employments in which they are taught to make only one particular part of the article manufactured: _so that at the end of their servitude they are altogether unable to make any one article of their trade in a complete state_. That a large proportion of these apprentices consist of orphans, or are the children of widows, or belong to the very poorest families, and frequently are apprenticed by boards of guardians. "That in these districts it is common for parents to borrow money of the employers, and to stipulate, by express agreement, to repay it from their children's wages; a practice which prevails likewise in Birmingham and Warrington: in most other places no evidence was discovered of its existence."—_Second Report of the Commissioners_, p. 195, 196. Here we have a fearful text on which to comment. In these few sentences we see the disclosure of a system which, if followed out and abused, must produce a state of slavery of the very worst and most oppressive character. To show that it _is_ thus abused, here are some extracts from the Reports on the Wolverhampton district, to which the Central Board of Commissioners direct special attention:—