Your paragraph relates further, that Sir Isaac Newton reported an assay taken at the Tower, of Wood’s metal, by which it appears that Wood had in all respects performed his contract.  His contract!  With whom?  Was it with the Parliament or people of Ireland?  Are not they to be the purchasers?  But they detest, abhor, and reject it, as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.  Upon which he grows angry, goes to law, and will impose his goods upon us by force.

But your news-letter says that an assay was made of the coin.  How impudent and insupportable is this?  Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two half-pence of good metal, sends them to the Tower and they are approved, and these must answer all that he hath already coined or shall coin for the future.  It is true, indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff, I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain.  But if I were to buy an hundred sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single weather fat and well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred, without suffering me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good security to restore my money for those that were lean or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his customer.  I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encourage purchasers:  and this is directly the case in point with Mr. Wood’s assay.

The next part of the paragraph contains Mr. Wood’s voluntary proposals for preventing any future objections or apprehensions.

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 half-pence, but hath not obliged us to take them, and I have already shown in my Letter to the Shop-keepers, etc., 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.