=Joseph Hancock of Sheffield.=--Thomas Boulsover claims our regard for his invention and his steady application to it on a minor plane. But Joseph Hancock took longer views. He was a member of the Corporation of Cutlers in Sheffield, and he it was who saw to what great uses the new invention could be put if handled on a great scale. He made candlesticks, teapots, salvers, and many other more important articles, and by so doing he raised the process above the snuff-box and button level and established commercially the great industry for which Sheffield has become famous. Mills were erected for rolling out the ingots, skilled workmen were procured who had served their apprenticeship as silversmiths in London and elsewhere. Sheffield, almost concurrently with the great impetus given to the making of plated silver ware, began to make silver plate. But such solid silver had to be conveyed to London to receive the marks of the Goldsmiths Company of London to denote its standard quality. In regard to embarking on so novel an enterprise as raising a great industry founded on the designs of the silversmiths, there must have been many forebodings as to legal possibilities. The laws on the subject were very stringent. Persons had been fined and imprisoned in the reign of George II for manufacturing plate of lower value than the standard. In 1741 one Drew Drury of London stated that he was inadvertently concerned in making a stamp resembling the "Lion Passant," that he had never made any use of it, and that he had caused it to be broken. The Wardens of the Goldsmiths Company did not accept his confession and proceeded against him. Among exceptions not required to be assayed were metal spouts to china, stone or earthenware teapots and shirt buckles or brooches. But silver shoe-clasps, patch boxes, salt shovels, tea strainers, caddy spoons, bottle tickets (wine labels), and all buckles except the above mentioned were, if silver, to be assayed.