Company, therefore, may be said to be five-
fold, in respect to the principal articles of gold
and silver sent to them—viz., to see that the
gold or silver is of the proper standard; to see
that the silver is not plated silver, or the gold
silver-gilt; to see that the solder employed
has not been too much in relative weight; to
stamp the article when approved; and to
receive money when the article is returned to
the owner. This money consists of a small
sum for the stamping-fee, and a much larger
sum for the Government. The present duty
—seventeen shillings per ounce for gold, and
one shilling and sixpence for silver—is practically
reduced to fourteen shillings and
twopence, and one shilling and threepence, an
allowance of one-sixth being made to the
manufacturer for a slight reduction in the
weight of each article during the finishing
processes; this finishing being always
conducted after the assaying and stamping have
taken place. The Company pay these duties
into the Bank of England, where they are
placed to the account of the Receiver of Stamps
and Taxes; and the Company, having thus
acted as tax-gatherers, are paid for so doing
at the rate of two-and-a-half per cent. The
Company receives about four thousand a year
from the manufacturers for assaying and
stamping, and about two thousand a year from
the Government for collecting the tax. There
is one deputy-warden appointed by the
Company, with a salary, to superintend especially
these matters; and under him are an engraver
of punches, three assayers, two weighers,
three drawers, and a cupel-maker.

Boys carry the articles of plate between
Clerkenwell and Foster Lane. Let us
suppose that young Tom Simmons, a Clerkenwell
apprentice, arrived or arriving at years
of discretion sufficiently to be trusted,
takes a piece of unfinished plate to
Goldsmiths' Hall. The weighers ascertain the
weight, calculate the duty at so much per
ounce, set down the fee required for assaying
and stamping, and enter the items in due
form. The drawers or scrapers then take the
piece of plate in hand. They examine it to see
that the several parts all belong properly to
each other, and that it is not charged with a
suspiciously large amount of solder. This
examination being satisfactorily concluded,
they draw or scrape a few fragments from
the surface of the article, just sufficient for
the purposes of assay; and if there be a
shadow of suspicion that there are different
qualities of metal in different parts of the
article, the scraper is applied to all those
parts, and a fair average made of the
whole. Then comes the third stage in the
history: the drawers hand over the little
fragments to the assayers, who proceed to
determine whether the metal be up to the
standard. If all be right up to this time, the
drawers again take the piece of plate, and
stamp it with the requisite marks. If all be
not right, if the metal be lower than
standard, the article is retained until the
following day; it is again tried, and if again
found wanting, it is broken up; but if the
manufacturer, willing to save his poor bantling,
should ask for a third trial, and should
be willing to pay another shilling for it, he
can do so: the third verdict is final, there
being no appeal against it; and the broken
piece of glitter is sent home in disgrace. But
our piece of plate we of course assume to be
standard. After the assayers have reported
well of it, and the drawers have stamped it,
the weighers re-weigh it; and then there is
very little else to be done before Tom takes
home the piece of plate to his master's.

The principle of adulteration (pity that we
should have to use such a term) sometimes
creeps into these golden products. The
maker of a watch-case may, if he be less
honest than his compeers, make some of the
tiny bits of less than perfect metal; but the
drawers baffle him; they scrape from all the
parts, good and bad; and if there happen to
be former peccadillos attached to his name,
the scrapings are made yet more carefully;
and he must abide by the average result of
the whole. The assayers are not allowed to
know to whom the several little packets of
scrapings belong; these are wrapped up
separately by the drawers, with certain private
marks and numbers, and are placed in boxes;
and the assayers take them from the boxes,
assay them, and report the results, without
knowing who are the parties affected by their
decision. Thus are there one or two hundred
assays, more or less, made every day at the
Hall: one assayer confining his attention to
gold, and two others to silver.

The Company, in order to have some test
that their servants have properly performed
the duties entrusted to them, hold a kind of
annual scrutiny—an assay of a more formal
nature. Portions of the scrapings resulting
from the assays made during the year,
amounting possibly to fifty thousand, are
kept, sufficient to form a judgment on the
whole. The practical members of the
Company are convened—leaving out the noble
lords and right honourable gentlemen who
somehow become members of this as of the
other great City Companies—and the parliament,
or jury, or judges, or arbitrators, or
scrutineers (call them which we may) melt
down the scrapings, and make a very careful
assay of them; the result of this assay shows
whether or not the three assayers have done
their year's work well. But the diet of the
Birmingham and Sheffield assay is more official
and more imperative; we must briefly
notice it.

The golden doings of Birmingham have
undergone very considerable change within
the last few years. Time was when the
"toy-shop of Europe" produced immense
quantities of gilt toys, which occupied some
thousands of hands; the buckles, the snaps,
the clasps, the earrings, the bracelets, the rings,