IRELAND'S CASE HUMBLY PRESENTED TO THE HONOURABLE THE KNIGHTS, CITIZENS, AND BURGESSES IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED
MOST HUMBLY SHEWETH,
Whereas your Honours finding the late Grant or Letters Patents obtained by Mr. William Wood, for making Three Hundred and Sixty Tun weight of copper half-pence for the Kingdom of Ireland, were to be manufactured in London &c. which money is now coining in Bristol, and that the said money was to weigh two shillings and sixpence in each pound weight, and that change was to be uttered or passed for all such as were pleased to take the same in this Kingdom.
That it's humbly conceived Your Honours on considering the following Remarks, will find the permitting such change to pass, exceeding Injurious and Destructive to the Nation.
First. That the same will be a means to drain this Kingdom of all its Gold and Silver, and ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent abated, will most effectually do the same.
2d. That the making such money in England will give great room for counterfeiting that coin, as well in this Kingdom, as where it is made.
3d. That the Copper Mines of this Island which might be manufactured in the nation, is by management shipped off to England by some persons at, or about forty shillings per tun, by others at four pounds and six pounds per ton, which copper when smelted and refined is sold and sent back to this kingdom at two shillings and six pence per pound weight as aforesaid, which is two hundred and eighty pound sterl. per ton.
4th. That two shillings and sixpence per pound weight is making the said coin of very small value, the said coin ought not to weigh or exceed two shillings in each pound weight as the English Halfpence are.
5th. That all such money brought to this Nation manufactured, is to be entered at value, which value is in the Book of Rates, ten per cent duty and excise.
6th. That no security is given to this Nation to make such money in any one point, the same may be found defective in either, as to baseness of metal, workmanship or weight, or to give gold and silver for the same, when the subject was, or may be burthened therewith.