THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS.

upon the compter; if he then gives me the word of
command to receive my money in Wood's coin, and
calls me "a disaffected, Jacobite dog," for refusing it
(although I am as loyal a subject as himself, and with-
out hire), and thereupon seizes my cloth, leaving me
the price in this odious copper, and bids me take my
remedy; in this case I shall hardly be brought to
think that I am left to my own will. I shall there-
fore on such occasions first order the porter aforesaid
to go off with his pack, and then see the money in
silver and gold in my possession, before I cut or mea-
sure my cloth. But
pot first, and then offers payment in Wood's halfpence,
a common soldier drinks his
the landlady may be under some difficulty; for if
she complains to his captain or ensign, they are like-
wise officers included in this general order for encoura-
ging these halfpence to pass as current money. If she
goes to a justice of peace, he is also an officer to whom
this general order is directed. I do therefore advise
her to follow my practice, which I have already be-
gun, and be paid for her goods before she parts with
them. However, I should have been content, for some
reasons, that the military gentlemen had been excepted
by name; because I have heard it said, that their dis-
cipline is best confined within their own district.

His majesty, in the conclusion of his answer to the
address of the house of lords against Wood's coin, is
pleased to say, "that he will do everything in his
power to the satisfaction of his people." It should
seem, therefore, that the recalling of the patent is not
to be understood as a thing in his power. But how-
ever, since the law does not oblige us to receive this
coin, and consequently the patent leaves it to our vo-
luntary choice, there is nothing remaining to preserve
us from ruin but that the whole kingdom should con-
tinue in a firm, determinate resolution never to receive
or utter this fatal coin. After which let the officers
to whom these orders are directed (I would willingly
except the military), come with their exhortations,
their arguments, and their eloquence, to persuade us
to find our interest in our undoing. Let Wood and his
accomplices travel about the country with cart-loads
of their ware, and see who will take it off their hands:
there will be no fear of his being robbed, for a high-
wayman would scorn to touch it.

I am only in pain how the commissioners of the revenue will proceed in this juncture; because I am told they are obliged by an act of parliament to take nothing but gold and silver in payment for his majesty's customs; and I think they cannot justly offer this coinage of Mr. Wood to others unless they will be content to receive it themselves.

The sum of the whole is this. The Committee advises the king to send immediate orders to all his officers here, that Wood's coin be suffered and permitted, without any let, suit, trouble, &c., to pass and be received as current money by such as shall be willing to receive the same. It is probable that the first willing receivers may be those who must receive it whether they will or not, at least under the penalty of losing an office. But the landed undepending men, the merchants, the shopkeepers, and bulk of the people, I hope and am almost confident will never receive it. sequence be? The owners will sell it for as much as What must the conthey can get. Wood's halfpence will come to be offered for six a penny (yet then he will be a sufficient gainer), and the necessary receivers will be losers of two-thirds in their salaries or pay.

17

you have made an order that ale should be sold in our
by G-, I will not."
country for three halfpence a quart: I desire you will
now make another, to appoint who must drink it, for

ships in one particular. Wood has graciously pro-
I must beg leave to caution your lordships and wor-
mised to load us at present only with 40,0007. of his coin
till the exigencies of the kingdom require the rest.
entreat you will never suffer Mr. Wood to be a judge
I
of your exigencies. While there is one piece of silver
He will double his present quantum by stealth as soon
or gold left in the kingdom, he will call it an exigency.
upon us; France and Holland will do the same; nor
will our own coiners at home be behind them: to con-
as he can; he will pour his own raps and counterfeits
that in my conscience I believe it is not of his coin-
firm which, I have now in my pocket a rap or counter-
ing.
feit halfpenny, in imitation of his, but so ill performed

you will give great allowance for this long undigested I must now desire your lordships and worships, that titions, which were the effects of haste, while new thoughts fell in to add something to what I had said paper. I find myself to have gone into several repeswered every paragraph in the report; which, although it be not unartfully drawn, and is perfectly in the before. I think I may affirm that I have fully anspirit of a pleader who can find the most plausible topics in behalf of his client, yet there was no great skill required to detect the many mistakes contained in it; which however are by no means to be charged upon the right honourable committee, but upon the most and his accomplices. I desire one particular may dwell false, impudent, and fraudulent representations of Wood than once; that after all the weight laid upon preupon your minds, although I have mentioned it more cedents, there is not one produced in the whole report of a patent for coining copper in England to pass in by references to the king's council here; both less adIreland; and only two patents referred to (for indeed there were no more), which were both passed in Ireland, both securities given to receive the coin at every call, and give gold and silver in lieu of it. This demonvantageous to the coiner than this of Wood; and in strates the most flagrant falsehood and impudence of legal and exorbitant gain) to ruin a kingdom which Wood, by which he would endeavour to make the right honourable committee his instruments (for his own ilhas deserved quite different treatment.

taken might have worthily employed a much better I am very sensible that such a work as I have underoften happens the weakest in the family runs first to stop the door. All the assistance I had were some inpen; but when a house is attempted to be robbed, it formations from an eminent person; whereof I am afraid I have spoiled a few, by endeavouring to make them of a piece with my own productions, and the rest I could not move in the armour of Saul, and therefore I rather chose to attack this uncircumcised Philistine was not able to manage: I was in the case of David, who (Wood I mean) with a sling and a stone. And I may say, for Wood's honour as well as my own, that he resembles Goliath in many circumstances very applicable to the present purpose; for Goliath had "a helmet of brass brass; and he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of This puts me in mind of a passage I was told many years ago in England. At a quarter-session in Leices- armies of the living God. Goliath's conditions of coma target of brass between his shoulders.' ter, the justices had wisely decreed to take off a half-bat were likewise the same with those of Wood: "if he was like Mr. Wood, all over brass, and he defied the In short, he penny in a quart from the price of ale. One of them who came in after the thing was determined, being informed of what had passed, said thus: "Gentlemen,

VOL. II,

But if

prevail against us, then shall we be his servants.
part of the condition; "he shall never be a servant of
it happens that I prevail over him, I renounce the other

с

18

THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS.

mine; for I do not think him fit to be trusted in any honest man's shop."

I will conclude with my humble desire and request which I made in my second letter, that your lordships and worships would please to order a declaration to be drawn up, expressing in the strongest terms your resolution never to receive or utter any of Wood's halfpence or farthings, and forbidding your tenants to receive them: that the said declaration may be signed by as many persons as possible a who have estates in this kingdom, and be sent down to your several tenants aforesaid. And if the dread of Wood's halfpence should continue until next quarter-sessions, which I hope it will not, the gentlemen of every county will then have a fair opportunity of declaring against them with unanimity and zeal.

I am, with the greatest respect,

(May it please your lordships and worships,)

Your most dutiful and obedient servant, M.B.

LETTER THE FOURTH.

TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE OF IRELAND. [In this Letter the government of Ireland discovered matter for prosecution.]

Oct. 23, 1724.

MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN, HAVING already written three letters upon so disagreeable a subject as Mr. Wood and his halfpence, I conceived my task was at an end; but I find that cordials must be frequently applied to weak constitutions, political as well as natural. A people long used to hardships lose by degrees the very notions of liberty. They look upon themselves as creatures at mercy, and that all impositions laid on them by a stronger hand are, in the phrase of the Report, legal and obligatory. Hence proceed that poverty and lowness of spirit to which a kingdom may be subject, as well as a particular person. And when Esau came fainting from the field at the point to die, it is no wonder that he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.

I thought I had sufficiently shown to all who could
want instruction by what methods they might safely
proceed, whenever this coin should be offered to them;
and I believe there has not been for many ages an
example of any kingdom so firmly united in a point of
great importance, as this of ours is at present against
But however it so happens
that detestable fraud.
that some weak people begin to be alarmed anew by
rumours industriously spread. Wood prescribes to the
newsmongers in London what they are to write. In
one of their papers, published here by some obscure
printer, and certainly with a bad design, we are told
"That the Papists in Ireland have entered into an
association against his coin," although it be notoriously
known that they never once offered to stir in the matter;
so that the two houses of parliament, the privy-council,
the great number of corporations, the lord mayor and
aldermen of Dublin, the grand juries and principal
gentlemen of several counties, are stigmatized in a lump
under the name of "papists."

This impostor and his crew do likewise give out,
that by refusing to receive his dross for sterling we
"dispute the king's prerogative, are grown ripe for
rebellion, and ready to shake off the dependency of
To counte-
Ireland upon the crown of England."
nance which reports he has published a paragraph in
another newspaper, to let us know that "the lord-lieu-
tenant is ordered to come over immediately to settle
his halfpence.'

I entreat you, my dear countrymen, not to be under
the least concern upon these and the like rumours,
which are no more than the last howls of a dog dissected
a A declaration was signed soon after by the most consider-
able persons of the kingdom.

nies are the only reserve that is left him. For surely
alive, as I hope he has sufficiently been. These calum-
our continued and (almost) unexampled loyalty will
to be robbed of all that we have by one obscure iron-
never be called in question, for not suffering ourselves
monger.

As to disputing the king's prerogative, give me leave
to explain to those who are ignorant what the meaning
of that word prerogative is.

The kings of these realms enjoy several powers, where-
in the laws have not interposed. So they can make
war and peace without the consent of parliament-and
this is a very great prerogative: but if the parliament
charge of it out of his own purse-and this is a great
does not approve of the war, the king must bear the
So the king has a prerogative to
check on the crown.

coin money without consent of parliament; but he
cannot compel the subject to take that money except
it be sterling gold or silver, because herein he is limited
by law. Some princes have, indeed, extended their
prerogative further than the law allowed them; where-
in, however, the lawyers of succeeding ages, as fond as
they are of precedents, have never dared to justify them.
But to say the truth, it is only of late times that pre-
rogative has been fixed and ascertained; for whoever
reads the history of England will find that some former
kings, and those none of the worst, have upon several
occasions ventured to control the laws, with very little
ceremony or scruple, even later than the days of queen
In her reign that pernicious counsel of
Elizabeth.
sending base money hither very narrowly failed of
losing the kingdom-being complained of by the lord-
deputy, the council, and the whole body of the English
here; so that soon after her death it was recalled by
her successor, and lawful money paid in exchange.

Having thus given you some notion of what is meant by "the king's prerogative," as far as a tradesman can be thought capable of explaining it, I will only add the opinion of the great lord Bacon: "That, as God governs the world by the settled laws of nature, which he has made, and never transcends those laws but upon high and important occasions, so among earthly princes those are the wisest and the best who govern by the known laws of the country, and seldomest make use of their prerogative."

Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the king's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have any no place because compelling the subject to take coin which is not sterling is no part of the king's prerogative, and I am very confident if it were so we should be the last of his people to dispute it; as well from that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his majesty as from the treatment we might, in such a case, justly But God be expect from some who seem to think we have neither thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects and not our masters. One great merit I am sure we have, which those of English birth can have no pretence to-that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate,-the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent,-a ruined trade,a house of peers without jurisdiction,-almost an incapacity for all employments,-and the dread of Wood's halfpence.

common sense

nor common senses.

But we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any man for setting his royal image and superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only attended with one small limitation-that nobody alive is obliged to take them.

Upon these considerations, I was ever against all

20

20

is neither Whig nor Tory-neither of town nor coun-
try party; and it is not improbable, that a gentleman
would rather choose to live upon his own estate, which
brings him gold and silver, than with the addition of
an employment, when his rents and salary must both be
paid in Wood's brass at above 80 per cent. discount.
For these and many other reasons I am confident
you need not be under the least apprehension from
the sudden expectation of the lord lieutenant,a while |
we continue in our present hearty disposition, to alter
which no suitable temptation can possibly be offered.
And if, as I have often asserted from the best authority,
the law has not left a power in the crown to force any
money, except sterling, upon the subject, much less
can the crown devolve such a power upon another.

This I speak with the utmost respect to the person and dignity of his excellency the lord Carteret, whose character was lately given me by a gentleman that has known him from his first appearance in the world. That gentleman describes him as a young man of great accomplishments, excellent learning, regular in his life, and of much spirit and vivacity. He has since, as I have heard, been employed abroad; was principal secretary of state; and is now, about the thirty-seventh year of his age, appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland. From such a governor this kingdom may reasonably hope for as much prosperity as, under so many discouragements, it can be capable of receiving.

It is true, indeed, that within the memory of man there have been governors of so much dexterity as to carry points of terrible consequence to this kingdom by their power with those who are in office; and by their arts in managing or deluding others with oaths, If Wood's brass affability, and even with dinners. had in those times been upon the anvil, it is obvious enough to conceive what methods would have been taken. Depending persons would have been told in plain terms, "that it was a service expected from them, under the pain of the public business being put into Others would be allured more complying hands." by promises. To the country gentlemen, beside good words, burgundy, and closeting, it might perhaps have been hinted, "how kindly it would be taken to comply with a royal patent, although it were not compulsory; that if any inconveniencies ensued, it might be made up with other graces or favours hereafter; that gentlemen ought to consider whether it were prudent or safe to disgust England. They would be desired to think of some good bills for encouraging of trade and setting the poor to work; some further acts against popery, and for uniting protestants." There would be solemn engagements, "that we should never be troubled with above 40,000/. in his coin, and all of the best and weightiest sort, for which we should only give our manufactures in exchange, and keep our gold and silver at home." Perhaps a seasonable report of some invasion would have been spread in the most proper juncture; which is a great smoother of rubs in public proceedings; and we should have been told "that this was no time to create differences when the kingdom was in danger."

These, I say, and the like methods would, in corrupt times, have been taken to let in this deluge of brass among us; and I am confident, even then would not have succeeded; much less under the administration of so excellent a person as the lord Carteret, and in a country where the people of all ranks, parties, and denominations, are convinced to a man that the utter undoing of themselves and their posterity for ever will be dated from the admission of that execrable coin; that if it once enters, it can be no more confined to a small or moderate quantity than a plague can be confined to a few

a Lord Carteret, afterwards earl Granville, in some respects a favourite of the dean.

families; and that no equivalent can be given by any
earthly power, any more than a dead carcase can be re-
covered to life by a cordial.

There is one comfortable circumstance in this universal opposition to Mr. Wood, that the people sent over hither from England, to fill up our vacancies, ecclesiastical, civil and military, are all on our side. Money, the great divider of the world, has, by a strange revolution, been a great uniter of a most divided people. Who would leave 1007. a-year in England (a country of freedom) to be paid 1000l. in Ireland out of Wood's exchequer? The gentleman they have lately made primate [Dr. Hugh Boulter] would never quit his seat in an English house of lords, and his preferments at Oxford and Bristol, worth 12001. a-year, for four times the denomination here but not half the value; therefore, I expect to hear he will be as good an Irishman, at least upon who have had the misfortune to be born in this island. this one article, as any of his brethren, or even of us For those who in the common phrase do not come hither to learn the language would never change a better country for a worse, to receive brass instead of gold.

Another slander spread by Wood and his emissaries is "that by opposing him we discover an inclination to throw off our dependence upon the crown of England." Pray observe how important a person is this same William Wood, and how the public weal of two kingdoms is involved in his private interest. First, all those who refuse to take his coin are Papists; for he tells us, "that none but Papists are associated against Secondly, "they dispute the king's prerohim." gative." Thirdly, "they are ripe for rebellion." And, fourthly," they are going to shake off their dependence upon the crown of England;" that is to say, they are going to choose another king; for there can be no other meaning in this expression, however some may pretend to strain it.

66

And this gives me an opportunity of explaining to Those who come over hither to those who are ignorant another point, which has often swelled in my breast. us from England, and some weak people among ourselves, whenever in discourse we make mention of liberty and property, shake their heads, and tell us that "Ireland is a depending kingdom;"" as if they would seem by this phrase to intend that the people of Ireland are in some state of slavery or dependence different from those of England; whereas a depending kingdom is a modern term of art, unknown, as I have heard, to all ancient civilians and writers upon government; and Ireland is, on the contrary, called in some statutes an imperial crown," as held only from God; which is as high a style as any kingdom is capable of receiving. Therefore, by this expression, "a depending kingdom," there is no more to be understood than that, the king and his successors are to be kings imperial by a statute made here in the 33rd year of Henry VIII., of this realm, as united and knit to the imperial crown of England. I have looked over all the English and Irish statutes without finding any law that makes Ireland depend upon England, any more than England does upon Ireland. We have indeed obliged ourselves to have the same king with them; and consequently they are obliged to have the same king with us. For the law was made by our own parliament; and our ancestors then were not such fools (whatever they were in the preceding reign) to bring themselves under I know not what dependence, which is now talked of without any ground of law, reason, or common sense.

my

Let whoever thinks otherwise, I, M.B., drapier, desire to be excepted; for I declare, next under God, I depend only on the king my sovereign and on the laws of own country. And I am so far from depending upon This passage was one of those selected for prosecution by the government.