The Report says, that “upon an assay made of the fineness, weight and value of this copper, it exceeded in every article.”  This is possible enough in the pieces upon which the assay was made; but Wood must have failed very much in point of dexterity, if he had not taken care to provide a sufficient quantity of such halfpence as would bear the trial; which he was well able to do, although “they were taken out of several parcels.”  Since it is now plain, that the bias of favour hath been wholly on his side.[6]

[Footnote 6:  The report of the assayers as abstracted by the Lords of the Committee in their report is not accurately stated.  Monck Mason notes that the abstract omits the following passage:  “But although the copper was very good, and the money, one piece with another, was full weight, yet the single pieces were not so equally coined in the weight as they should have been.”  Nor is it shown that the coins assayed were of the same kind as those sent into Ireland.  The Committee’s report fails to see the question that must arise when it is noted that while in England a pound of copper was made into twenty-three pence, yet for Ireland Wood was permitted to make it into thirty pence, in spite of the statement that the copper used in England was worth fivepence a pound more than that used by Wood. [T.S.]]

But what need is there of disputing, when we have positive demonstration of Wood’s fraudulent practices in this point?  I have seen a large quantity of these halfpence weighed by a very skilful person, which were of four different kinds, three of them considerably under weight.  I have now before me an exact computation of the difference of weight between these four sorts, by which it appears that the fourth sort, or the lightest, differs from the first to a degree, that, in the coinage of three hundred and sixty tons of copper, the patentee will be a gainer, only by that difference, of twenty-four thousand four hundred and ninety-four pounds, and in the whole, the public will be a loser of eighty-two thousand one hundred and sixty-eight pounds, sixteen shillings, even supposing the metal in point of goodness to answer Wood’s contract and the assay that hath been made; which it infallibly doth not.  For this point hath likewise been enquired into by very experienced men, who, upon several trials in many of these halfpence, have found them to be at least one fourth part below the real value (not including the raps or counterfeits that he or his accomplices have already made of his own coin, and scattered about).  Now the coinage of three hundred and sixty ton of copper coined by the weight of the fourth or lightest sort of his halfpence will amount to one hundred twenty-two thousand four hundred eighty-eight pounds, sixteen shillings, and if we subtract a fourth part of the real value by the base mixture in the metal, we must add to the public loss one fourth part to be subtracted from the intrinsic value of the copper, which in three