His first proposal is, that “whereas he hath already coined seventeen thousand pounds, and has copper prepared to make it up forty thousand pounds, he will be content to coin no more, unless the EXIGENCES OF TRADE REQUIRE IT, though his patent empowers him to coin a far greater quantity.”

To which if I were to answer it should be thus:  “Let Mr. Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers coin on till there is not an old kettle left in the kingdom:  let them coin old leather, tobacco-pipe clay or the dirt in the streets, and call their trumpery by what name they please from a guinea to a farthing, we are not under any concern to know how he and his tribe or accomplices think fit to employ themselves.”  But I hope and trust, that we are all to a man fully determined to have nothing to do with him or his ware.

The King has given him a patent to coin halfpence, but hath not obliged us to take them, and I have already shewn in my “Letter to the Shopkeepers, &c.” that the law hath not left it in the power of the prerogative to compel the subject to take any money, beside gold and silver of the right sterling and standard.

Wood further proposes, (if I understand him right, for his expressions are dubious) that “he will not coin above forty thousand pounds, unless the exigences of trade require it.”  First, I observe that this sum of forty thousand pounds is almost double to what I proved to be sufficient for the whole kingdom, although we had not one of our old halfpence left.  Again I ask, who is to be judge when the exigences of trade require it?  Without doubt he means himself, for as to us of this poor kingdom, who must be utterly ruined if his project should succeed, we were never once consulted till the matter was over, and he will judge of our exigences by his own; neither will these be ever at an end till he and his accomplices will think they have enough:  And it now appears that he will not be content with all our gold and silver, but intends to buy up our goods and manufactures with the same coin.

I shall not enter into examination of the prices for which he now proposes to sell his halfpence, or what he calls his copper, by the pound; I have said enough of it in my former letter, and it hath likewise been considered by others.  It is certain that by his own first computation, we were to pay three shillings for what was intrinsically worth but one,[9] although it had been of the true weight and standard for which he pretended to have contracted; but there is so great a difference both in weight and badness in several of his coins that some of them have been nine in ten below the intrinsic value, and most of them six or seven.[10]

[Footnote 9:  The report of the Committee of the Privy Council which sat on Wood’s coinage, stated that copper ready for minting cost eighteen pence per pound before it was brought into the Mint at the Tower of London.  See the Report prefixed to Letter III. and Appendix II., in which it is also stated that Wood’s copper was worth thirteen pence per pound. [T.S.]]