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[Page 7]
offerd to the approbation and well as subjected to the censure of all orders of man kind: & they are expected without the Payment either of Prime Cost of duties or of Freight, in the Pocket of Every person who visits foreign Countries, either for Pleasure or on business.
How desireable a thing it is to Provide the best possible workmanship for an article on which the Reputation of the nation for the fine arts both at home & abroad so immediately depends need not here be insisted upon, yet this very circumstance seems to have been more neglected by the minister of preceeding administrations, than possibly any other of the in other more minute details of the management of the Empire.
in the art of die sinking we are at Present below Contempt, the office of die sinker Cheif Engraver in his Majesties mint in the Tower has for want of adequate emoluments become heriditary & no effort has been made during the Present Reign to Raise us from our present state of humiliation in this Respect, except that of unless the appointment of Mr Merchant as assistant Engraver, a measure intended no doubt as a joint advantage to Mr Merchant & to the Public, but enterd into on very mistaken grounds.
Mr Merchant is certainly eminent above all others for Producing elegant & admirable gems, by the Patient abrasion of hard stones by the use of with diamond Powder, but so little is he yet acquainted with the use of these tools with which die sinkers scrape assay the soft steel in order to form the metrices of their dies, that he is not only unable to use them himself to any good Purpose, but is incapable of Profiting with assistance of Persons of Less eminent Talents than himself who have been educated to that profession; his first work, Commanded by His Majesty, by which much expectation was excited much expectation it was