Cheats have found a new and lucrative trade. There is
a rage for "old plate" just now, and preposterous prices are given, especially for old silver, which is occasionally sold, according to a recent article in the Quarterly Review, at four or five hundred times its value as metal. The age is tested by the " Hall" marks, and some of the dealers have taken to the practice of weld- ing bits of metal so stamped into larger articles, which are then sold to connoisseurs who know nothing except the marks, as antique specimens. The Goldsmiths' Company, which might be much more energetic than it is in putting down cheating in gold and silver articles, is now prosecuting a case, still undecided, in which it alleges this to have been done. Its plan is to discover the workman who did the work, and make him give evidence. If the workmen in Birmingham and the Potteries who turn out "old Spanish brass" articles by the dozen and "old blue china" plates by the score were put in the witness-box, a good many of the new race of curio-dealers would be locked up, to the advantage of buying mankind.
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