because I am informed that Wood is generally his own news-writer.  I cannot but observe from that paragraph that this public enemy of ours, not satisfied to ruin us with his trash, takes every occasion to treat this kingdom with the utmost contempt.  He represents several of our merchants and traders upon examination before a committee of a council, agreeing that there was the utmost necessity of copper-money here, before his patent, so that several gentlemen have been forced to tally with their workmen, and give them bits of cards sealed and subscribed with their names.  What then?  If a physician prescribe to a patient a dram of physic, shall a rascal apothecary cram him with a pound, and mix it up with poison?  And is not a landlord’s hand and seal to his own labourers a better security for five or ten shillings, than Wood’s brass seven times below the real value, can be to the kingdom, for an hundred and four thousand pounds?

But who are these merchants and traders of Ireland that make this report of the utmost necessity we are under of copper money?  They are only a few betrayers of their country, confederates with Wood, from whom they are to purchase a great quantity of his coin, perhaps at half value, and vend it among us to the ruin of the public and their own private advantage.  Are not these excellent witnesses, upon whose integrity the fate of a kingdom must depend, who are evidences in their own cause, and sharers in this work of iniquity?

If we could have deserved the liberty of coining for ourselves, as we formerly did (and why we have not is everybody’s wonder as well as mine), ten thousand pounds might have been coined here in Dublin of only one fifth below the intrinsic value, and this sum, with the stock of half-pence we then had, would have been sufficient:  but Wood by his emissaries, enemies to God and this kingdom, hath taken care to buy up as many of our old half-pence as he could, and from thence the present want of change arises; to remove which, by Mr. Wood’s remedy, would be, to cure a scratch on the finger by cutting off the arm.  But supposing there were not one farthing of change in the whole nation, I will maintain that five and twenty thousand pounds would be a sum fully sufficient to answer all our occasions.  I am no inconsiderable shop-keeper in this town, I have discoursed with several of my own and other trades, with many gentlemen both of city and country, and also with great numbers of farmers, cottagers, and labourers, who all agree that two shillings in change for every family would be more than necessary in all dealings.  Now by the largest computation (even before that grievous discouragement of agriculture, which hath so much lessened our numbers) the souls in this kingdom are computed to be one million and a half, which, allowing but six to a family, makes two hundred and fifty thousand families, and consequently two shillings to each family will amount only to five and twenty thousand pounds, whereas this honest liberal hard-ware-man Wood, would impose upon us above four times that sum.