[Footnote 5:  See Moryson’s “Itinerary” (Pt. ii., pp. 90, 196 and 262), where an account is given which fully bears out Swift.[T.S.]]

Having thus given you some notion of what is meant by the King’s “prerogative,” as far as a tradesman can be thought capable of explaining it, I will only add the opinion of the great Lord Bacon:  That “as God governs the world by the settled laws of nature, which he hath made, and never transcends those laws but upon high important occasions; so among earthly princes, those are the wisest and the best, who govern by the known laws of the country, and seldomest make use of their prerogative."[6]

[Footnote 6:  The words in inverted commas appear to be a reminiscence rather than a quotation.  I have not traced the sentence, as it stands, in Bacon; but the regular government of the world by the laws of nature, as contrasted with the exceptional disturbance of these laws, is enunciated in Bacon’s “Confession of Faith,” while the dangers of a strained prerogative are urged in the “Essay on Empire.”  Bacon certainly gives no support to Swift’s limits of the prerogative as regards coinage. [CRAIK.]]

Now, here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his accomplices, charging us with “disputing the King’s prerogative” by refusing his brass, can have no place, because compelling the subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the King’s prerogative, and I am very confident if it were so, we should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to His Majesty, as from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from some who seem to think, we have neither common sense nor common senses.  But God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects, and not our masters.  One great merit I am sure we have, which those of English birth can have no pretence to, that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England, for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate, the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent, a ruined trade, a House of Peers without jurisdiction, almost an incapacity for all employments; and the dread of Wood’s halfpence.

But we are so far from disputing the King’s prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any man for setting his royal image and superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to Japan, only attended with one small limitation, That nobody alive is obliged to take them.

Upon these considerations I was ever against all recourse to England for a remedy against the present impending evil, especially when I observed that the addresses of both Houses, after long expectance, produced nothing but a REPORT altogether in favour of Wood, upon which I made some observations in a former letter, and might at least have made as many more.  For it is a paper of as singular a nature as I ever beheld.