Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/164

154 my pen, and venturing only to incur the publick censure of the world, as a writer, not of my lord chief justice Whitshed, as a criminal. Whenever an order shall come out by authority, forbidding all men, upon the highest penalties, to offer any thing in writing or discourse against Mr. Wood's halfpence, I shall certainly submit. However, if that should happen, I am determined to be somewhat more than the last man in the kingdom to receive them; because I will never receive them at all; for, although I know how to be silent, I have not yet learned to pay active obedience against my conscience, and the publick safety.

I desire to put a case, which I think the drapier in some of his books has put before me; although not so fully as it requires.

You know the copper halfpence in England are coined by the publick; and every piece worth pretty near the value of the copper. Now suppose, that instead of the publick coinage, a patent had been granted to some private obscure person, for coining a proportionable quantity of copper in that kingdom, to what Mr. Wood is preparing in this; and all of it at least five times below the intrinsick value: the current money of England is reckoned to be twenty millions; and ours under five hundred thousand pounds: by this computation, as Mr. Wood has power to give us 108000 pounds; so the patentee in England, by the same proportion, might circulate four millions three hundred and twenty thousand pounds; beside as much more by stealth and counterfeits. I desire to know from you, whether the parliament might not have addressed upon such an occasion; what success they probably