The Report farther tells us, it “must be admitted that letters-patents under the Great Seal of Great Britain for coining copper money for Ireland are legal and obligatory, a just and reasonable exercise of His Majesty’s royal prerogative, and in no manner derogatory or invasive of any liberty or privilege of his subjects of Ireland.”  First we desire to know, why His Majesty’s prerogative might not have been as well asserted, by passing this patent in Ireland, and subjecting the several conditions of the contract to the inspection of those who are only concerned, as was formerly done in the only precedents for patents granted for coining for this kingdom, since the mixed money[12] in Queen Elizabeth’s time, during the difficulties of a rebellion:  Whereas now upon the greatest imposition that can possibly be practised, we must go to England with our complaints, where it hath been for some time the fashion to think and to affirm that “we cannot be too hardly used.”  Again the Report says, that “such patents are obligatory.”  After long thinking, I am not able to find out what can possibly be meant here by this word obligatory.  This patent of Wood neither obligeth him to utter his coin, nor us to take it, or if it did the latter, it would be so far void, because no patent can oblige the subject against law, unless an illegal patent passed in one kingdom can bind another and not itself.

[Footnote 12:  “Civill warre having set all Ireland in a combustion, the Queene [Elizabeth] more easily to subdue the rebels, did take silver coyne from the Irish, some few years before her death, and paid her army with a mixed base coyne, which, by proclamation, was commanded to be spent and received, for sterling silver money.  This base mixed money had three parts of copper, and the fourth part of silver, which proportion of silver was in some part consumed by the mixture, so as the English goldsmiths valued a shilling thereof at no more than two silver pence, though they acknowledged the same to be worth two pence halfpenny.”  (Fynes Moryson’s “Itinerary,” pt. i., p. 283). [T.S.]]

Lastly, it is added that “such patents are in no manner derogatory or invasive of any liberty or privilege of the King’s subjects of Ireland.”  If this proposition be true, as it is here laid down, without any limitation either expressed or implied, it must follow that a King of England may at any time coin copper money for Ireland, and oblige his subjects here to take a piece of copper under the value of half a farthing for half-a-crown, as was practised by the late King James, and even without that arbitrary prince’s excuse, from the necessity and exigences of his affairs.  If this be in no manner “derogatory nor evasive of any liberties or privileges of the subjects of Ireland,” it ought to have been expressed what our liberties and privileges are, and whether we have any at all, for in specifying the word Ireland, instead of saying “His Majesty’s subjects,”