selling, using, or setting on to a garment any buttons covered with cloth, or other stuff of which garments are made, shall forfeit five pounds for every dozen of such buttons, or in proportion for any lesser quantity;” by an Act of the seventh of George the First, “any wearer of such unlawful buttons is liable to the penalty of forty shillings per dozen, and in proportion for any lesser quantity.”  Several cases are on record in which tradesmen have been heavily fined under these; strange laws, and before they were repealed it is related by Dr. Doran (in 1855) that one individual not only got out of paying for a suit of clothes because of the illegality of the tailor in using covered buttons, but actually sued the unfortunate “snip” for the informer’s share of the penalties, the funniest part of the tale being that the judge who decided the case, the barrister who pleaded the statute, and the client who gained the clothes he ought to have paid for, were all of them buttoned contrary to law.  These Acts were originally enforced to protect the many thousands who at the time were employed in making buttons of silk, thread, &c., by hand, and not, as is generally supposed, in favour of the metal button manufacturers, though on April 4, 1791, Thomas Gem, the solicitor to the committee for the protection of the button trade, advertised a reward for any information against the wearers of the unlawful covered buttons.  The “gilt button days” of Birmingham was a time of rare prosperity, and dire was the distress when, like the old buckles, the fashion of wearing the gilt on the blue went out.  Deputations to royalty had no effect in staying the change, and thousands were thrown on the parish.  It was sought to revive the old style in 1850, when a deputation of button makers solicited Prince Albert to patronise the metallic buttons for gentlemen’s coats, but Fashion’s fiat was not to be gainsayed.  John Taylor, High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1756, is said to have sent out about L800 worth of buttons per week.  Papier mache buttons came in with Henry Clay’s patent in 1778.  He also made buttons of slate.  Boulton, of Soho, was the first to bring out steel buttons with facets, and it is said that for some of superior design he received as much as 140 guineas per gross.  Horn buttons, though more correctly speaking they should have been called “hoof” buttons, were a great trade at one time, selling in 1801 as low as 5-1/2d. per gross.  “Maltese buttons” (glass beads mounted in metal) were, in 1812, made here in large quantities, as were also the “Bath metal drilled shank button” of which 20,000 gross per week were sent out, and a fancy cut white metal button, in making which 40 to 50 firms were engaged, each employing 20 to 40 hands, but the whole trade in these specialities was lost in consequence of a few men being enticed to or imprisoned in France, and there establishing a rival manufacture.  Flexible shanks were patented in 1825 by B. Sanders.  Fancy silk buttons, with