I must beg leave to caution your lordships and worships in one particular.  Wood hath graciously promised to load us at present only with forty thousand pounds of his coin, till the exigences of the kingdom require the rest.  I entreat you will never suffer Mr. Wood to be a judge of your exigences.  While there is one piece of silver or gold remaining in the kingdom he will call it an exigency, he will double his present quantum by stealth as soon as he can, and will have the remainder still to the good.  He will pour his own raps[22]and counterfeits upon us:  France and Holland will do the same; nor will our own coiners at home be behind them:  To confirm which I have now in my pocket a rap or counterfeit halfpenny in imitation of his, but so ill performed, that in my conscience I believe it is not of his coining.

[Footnote 22:  The word Rap is probably a contraction of “raparee,” and was the name given to the tokens that passed current in Ireland for copper coins of small value.  Generally it referred to debased coins; hence it may be allied to “raparee,” who might be considered as a debased citizen.  The raparees were so called from the rapary or half-pike they carried. [T.S.]]

I must now desire your lordships and worships that you will give great allowance for this long undigested paper, I find myself to have gone into several repetitions, which were the effects of haste, while new thoughts fell in to add something to what I had said before.  I think I may affirm that I have fully answered every paragraph in the Report, which although it be not unartfully drawn, and is perfectly in the spirit of a pleader who can find the most plausible topics in behalf of his client, yet there was no great skill required to detect the many mistakes contained in it, which however are by no means to be charged upon the right honourable Committee, but upon the most false impudent and fraudulent representations of Wood and his accomplices.  I desire one particular may dwell upon your minds, although I have mentioned it more than once; That after all the weight laid upon precedents there is not one produced in the whole Report, of a patent for coining copper in England to pass in Ireland, and only two patents referred to (for indeed there were no more) which were both passed in Ireland, by references to the King’s Council here, both less advantageous to the coiner than this of Wood, and in both securities given to receive the coin at every call, and give gold and silver in lieu of it.  This demonstrates the most flagrant falsehood and impudence of Wood, by which he would endeavour to make the right honourable Committee his instruments, (for his own illegal and exorbitant gain,) to ruin a kingdom, which hath deserved quite different treatment.