The Report itself, which is here prefixed to the third letter, was said to have been the work of Walpole.  Undoubtedly, it contains the best arguments that could then be urged in favour of Wood and the patent, and undoubtedly, also, it would have had the desired effect had it been allowed to do its work uncriticised.  But Swift’s opposition was fatal to Walpole’s intentions.  He took the report as but another attempt to foist on the people of Ireland a decree in which they had not been consulted, and no amount of yielding, short of complete abandonment of it, would palliate the thing that was hateful in itself.  He resented the insult.  After specific rebuttals of the various arguments urged in the report in favour of the patent, Swift suddenly turns from the comparatively petty and insignificant consideration as to the weight and quality of the coins, and deals with the broad principle of justice which the granting of the patent had ignored.  Had the English Houses of Parliament and the English Privy Council, he said, addressed the King against a similar breach of the English people’s rights, his Majesty would not have waited to discuss the matter, nor would his ministers have dared to advise him as they had done in this instance.  “Am I a free man in England,” he exclaims, “and do I become a slave in six hours in crossing the channel?”

The report, however, is interesting inasmuch as it assists us to appreciate the pathetic condition of Irish affairs at the time.  The very fact that the petition of the Irish parliament could be so handled, proves how strong had been the hold over Ireland by England, and with what daring insistence the English ministers continued to efface the last strongholds of Irish independence.

Monck Mason, in reviewing the report, has devoted a very elaborate note to its details, and has fortified his criticisms with a series of remarkable letters from the Archbishop of Dublin, which he publishes for the first time.[1] I have embodied much of this note in the annotations which accompany the present reprint of this letter.

[Footnote 1:  “History of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” pp. lxxxvi-xcv.]

The text of this third letter is based on Sir W. Scott’s, collated with the first edition and that given by Faulkner in “Fraud Detected.”  It has also been read with Faulkner’s text given in the fourth volume of his edition of Swift’s Works, published in 1735.

[T.S.]

[Illustration: 
                SOME
          **Observations**

Upon a PAPER, Call’d, The

**REPORT**

OF THE
**COMMITTEE**
OF THE
Most Honourable the Privy-Council
IN
**ENGLAND,**
Relating to WOOD’s Half-pence.

By.  M.B. Drapier. 
AUTHOR of the LETTER to the
SHOP-KEEPERS, &c.

DUBLIN: 
Printed by John Harding in
Molesworth’s-Court in Fishamble Street.
]