William Speer was supervisor and chief assayer of spirits in the port of Dublin.
The receipt of bullion and the delivery of coin from the Mint is under the charge of the chief clerk, the manufacture of coin is in the hands of the superintendent of the operative department, and the valuation of the bullion by assay, and matters relating to the fineness of the coin are entrusted to the chemist and assayer.
He had been a member of the consultative committee on arts and manufactures since 1805; he was attached to the "administration des poudres et salpetres" in 1818, and in 1829 he received the lucrative post of assayer to the mint.
Among the more important officers appointed by the governor are the superintendent of public instruction, the commissioner of agriculture, statistics and mines, an assayer, state entomologist, and officers of the penitentiary.
There is a U.S. assayer's office here, and there are extensive shipyards, a large paper mill, iron works, and, just outside the city limits, the smelters of the American Smelters Securities Company, in connexion with which is one of the two plants in the United States for saving arsenic from smelter fumes.