Your paragraph relates further, that Sir Isaac Newton reported an assay taken at the Tower of Wood’s metal, by which it appears, that Wood had in all respects performed his contract[7].  His contract!  With whom?  Was it with the parliament or people of Ireland?  Are not they to be the purchasers?  But they detest, abhor, and reject it, as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.  Upon which he grows angry, goes to law, and will impose his goods upon us by force.

[Footnote 7:  For the full text of Newton’s report see Appendix, No.  II. [T.S.]]

But your Newsletter says that an assay was made of the coin.  How impudent and insupportable is this?  Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two halfpence of good metal, sends them to the Tower and they are approved, and these must answer all that he hath already coined or shall coin for the future.  It is true indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff, I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it, he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain.  But if I were to buy an hundred sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single wether fat and well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred, without suffering me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good security to restore my money for those that were lean or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his customer.  I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers:  And this is directly the case in point with Mr. Wood’s assay.[8]

[Footnote 8:  Monck Mason remarks on this assay that “the assay-masters do not report that Mr. Wood’s coinage was superior to that of former kings, but only to those specimens of such coinages as were exhibited by Mr. Wood, which, it is admitted were much worn.  Whether the money coined in the preceding reign was good or bad is in fact nothing to the purpose.” “‘What argument,’” quotes Monck Mason from the tract issued in 1724 entitled, “A Defence of the Conduct of the People of Ireland, in their unanimous refusal of Mr. Wood’s Copper Money,” “’can be drawn from the badness of our former coinages but this, that because we have formerly been cheated by our coiners, we ought to suffer Mr. Wood to cheat us over again?  Whereas, one reason for our so vigorously opposing Mr. Wood’s coinage, is, because we have always been imposed upon in our copper money, and we find he is treading exactly in the steps of his predecessors, and thinks he has a right to cheat us because he can shew a precedent for it.’  In truth, there was a vast number of counterfeits of those coins, which had been imported, chiefly from Scotland, as appears from a proclamation prohibiting the Importation of them in 1697” ("History St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” p, 340, note d.) [T.S.]]

The next part of the paragraph contains Mr. Wood’s voluntary proposals for “preventing any future objections or apprehensions.”