Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/40

30 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 physick, 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, ten times below the real value, can be to the kingdom for a hundred and eight thousand pounds?

But who are these merchants and traders of Ireland that made this report of the utmost necessity we are under for 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 the price that we are to take it, and vend it among us, to the ruin of the publick, and their own private advantages. Are not these excellent witnesses, upon whose integrity the fate of the kingdom must depend; 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 it not is every body's wonder as well as mine, ten thousand pounds might have been coined here in Dublin of only one fifth below the intrinsick value; and this sum, with the stock of halfpence we then had, would have been sufficient: but Wood, by his emissaries, enemies to God and this kingdom, has taken care to buy up as many of our old halfpence as he could; and from thence the present want