Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/24



About the year 1722, when Charles duke of Grafton was lord lieutenant of Ireland, one William Wood, a hardwareman and a bankrupt, alleging the great want of copper money in that kingdom, procured a patent for coining 108000l., to pass there as current money. The dean believing this measure to be a vile job from the beginning to the end, and that the chief procurers of the patent were to be sharers in the profits which would arise from the ruin of a kingdom, assumed the character of a draper, which for some reasons he chose to write drapier, and in the following warned the people not to receive the coin which was then sent over.