[Footnote 20:  William Conolly (d. 1729) was chosen Speaker of the Irish House of Commons on November 12th, 1715.  He held this office until October 12th, 1729.  Swift elsewhere says that Wharton sold Conolly the office of Chief Commissioner of the Irish Revenue for L3,000.  Between the years 1706 and 1729 Conolly was ten times selected for the office of a Lord Justice of Ireland.  The remark in the text as to Conolly’s income is repeated by Boulter ("Letters,” vol. i., p. 334), though the Primate writes of L17,000 a year.  The reference to Conolly is of set purpose, because Conolly had advocated the patent as against Midleton’s condemnation of it. [T.S.]]

For my own part, I am already resolved what to do; I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks, and instead of taking Mr. Wood’s bad copper, I intend to truck with my neighbours the butchers, and bakers, and brewers, and the rest, goods for goods, and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart’s blood till better times, or till I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy Mr. Wood’s money as my father did the brass money in K. James’s time,[21] who could buy ten pound of it with a guinea, and I hope to get as much for a pistole, and so purchase bread from those who will be such fools as to sell it me.

[Footnote 21:  James II., during his unsuccessful campaign in Ireland, debased the coinage in order to make his funds meet the demands of his soldiery.  Archbishop King, in his work on the “State of the Protestants in Ireland,” describes the evil effects which this proceeding had:  “King James’s council used not to stick at the formalities of law or reason, and therefore vast quantities of brass money were coined, and made current by a proclamation, dated 18th June, 1689, under severe penalties.  The metal of which this money was made was the worst kind of brass; old guns, and the refuse of metals were melted down to make it; workmen rated it at threepence or a groat a pound, which being coined into sixpences, shillings, or half-crowns, one pound weight made about L5.  And by another proclamation, dated 1690, the half-crowns were called in, and being stamped anew, were made to pass for crowns; so that then, three pence or four pence worth of metal made L10.  There was coined in all, from the first setting up of the mint, to the rout at the Boyne, being about twelve months, L965,375.  In this coin King James paid all his appointments, and all that received the king’s pay being generally papists, they forced the protestants to part with the goods out of their shops for this money, and to receive their debts in it; so that the loss by the brass money did, in a manner, entirely fall on the protestants, being defrauded (for I can call it no better) of about, L60,000 per month by this stratagem, which must, in a few months, have utterly exhausted them.  When the papists had gotten most of their saleable goods from their protestant neighbours,