Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/48

38 equity, and common manners, have consulted the principal party concerned; that is to say, the people of the kingdom, the house of lords, or commons, or the privy-council? If any foreigner should ask us, whose image and superscription there is on Wood's coin? We should be ashamed to tell him, it was Cæsar's. In that great want of copper halfpence which he alleges we were, our city set up our Cæsar's statue in excellent copper at an expense that is equal in value to thirty thousand pound of his coin; and we will not receive his image in worse metal.

I observe many of our people putting a melancholy case on this subject. It is true, say they, we are all undone if Wood's halfpence must pass; but what shall we do, if his majesty puts out a proclamation commanding us to take them? This has often been dinned in my ears. But I desire my countrymen to be assured that there is nothing in it. The king never issues out a proclamation but to enjoin what the law permits him. He will not issue out a proclamation against law; or, if such a thing should happen by a mistake, we are no more obliged to obey it, than to run our heads into the fire. Besides, his majesty will never command us by a proclamation, what he does not offer to command us in the patent itself. There he leaves it to our discretion; so that our destruction must be entirely owing to ourselves. Therefore let no man be afraid of a proclamation, which will never be granted; and if it should, yet upon this occasion will be of no force. The king's revenues here are near