[Footnote 11:  The printers [F.]]

I have now in hand one piece of stuff to be woven on purpose for your lordship, although I might be ashamed to offer it you, after I have confessed that it will be made only from the shreds and remnants of the wool employed in the former.  However I shall work it up as well as I can, and at worst, you need only give it among your tenants.

I am very sensible how ill your lordship is like to be entertained with the pedantry of a drapier in the terms of his own trade.  How will the matter be mended, when you find me entering again, though very sparingly, into an affair of state; for such is now grown the controversy with Mr. Wood, if some great lawyers are to be credited.  And as it often happens at play, that men begin with farthings, and go on to gold, till some of them lose their estates, and die in jail; so it may possibly fall out in my case, that by playing too long with Mr. Wood’s halfpence, I may be drawn in to pay a fine, double to the reward for betraying me, be sent to prison, and “not be delivered thence till I shall have paid the uttermost farthing.”

There are my lord, three sorts of persons with whom I am resolved never to dispute:  A highwayman with a pistol at my breast, a troop of dragoons who come to plunder my house, and a man of the law who can make a merit of accusing me.  In each of these cases, which are almost the same, the best method is to keep out of the way, and the next best is to deliver your money, surrender your house, and confess nothing.

I am told that the two points in my last letter, from which an occasion of offence hath been taken, are where I mention His Majesty’s answer to the address of the House of Lords upon Mr. Wood’s patent, and where I discourse upon Ireland’s being a dependent kingdom.  As to the former, I can only say, that I have treated it with the utmost respect and caution, and I thought it necessary to shew where Wood’s patent differed in many essential parts from all others that ever had been granted, because the contrary had for want of due information been so strongly and so largely asserted.  As to the other, of Ireland’s dependency, I confess to have often heard it mentioned, but was never able to understand what it meant.  This gave me the curiosity to enquire among several eminent lawyers, who professed they knew nothing of the matter.  I then turned over all the statutes of both kingdoms without the least information, further than an Irish act, that I quoted, of the 33d of Henry 8th, uniting Ireland to England under one king.  I cannot say I was sorry to be disappointed in my search, because it is certain, I could be contented to depend only upon God and my prince and the laws of my own country, after the manner of other nations.  But since my betters are of a different opinion, and desire further dependencies, I shall readily submit, not insisting on the exception I made of M.B.  Drapier.  For indeed that hint was borrowed from an idle story I had heard in England, which perhaps may be common and beaten, but because it insinuates neither treason nor sedition, I will just barely relate it.