But Wood is still working underhand to force his halfpence upon us; and if he can, by the help of his friends in England, prevail so far as to get an order, that the commissioners and collectors of the king's money shall receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case; for, the common soldier, when he goes to the market, or alehouse, will offer this money; and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher, or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper, or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do, than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be paid in Wood's money; for example, twenty pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in all things else, and not part with his goods till he gets the money.
For, suppose you go to art alehouse with that base money, and the landlord gives you a quart for four of those halfpence, what must the victualler do? his brewer will not be paid in that coin; or, if the brewer should be such a fool, the farmers will not take it from them for their bere[1], because they are bound, by their leases, to pay their rents in good and lawful money of England; which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; and the 'squire, their landlord, will never be so bewitched to take such trash for his land; so that it must certainly stop somewhere or other, and wherever it stops, it is the same thing, and we are all undone.
- ↑ A sort of barley in Ireland.
