MANUFACTURERS.

CHAP. XXVI.

272

It would have been impossible to have obtainedfrom so many and such various quarters, whateverpains may have been taken, exact returns. It wastherefore thought proper to limit the personalexamination to the thi’ee principal places, London ,Birmingham , and Sheffield. In the author’s in-quiries among the persons connected with theseveral branches of the trades that use gold andsilver in those three places, he has found somuch readiness to communicate information, somuch accuracy generally in the accounts renderedby some, verified by similar accounts suppliedby other individuals, and so much desire to pointout other sources of information, that he looksback to the time spent among those persons withmuch satisfaction.

In each branch of the trade a certain number ofpersons were so kind as to furnish exact accountsof their own consumption of both gold and silver,and their opinions as to the quantities consumedby others in the same branch. By this a clue wasfurnished, when these several accounts were com-pared with each other, which led to calculationsthat approximated as near to accuracy as could beexpected in such an inquiry.

In some cases the trade of a refiner of gold andsilver is combined with another technically distin-guished by the name of Sweep-washers. Thepersons employed in this branch purchase whateverrefuse is obtained from the floors of the various