I need not tell your lordship where the difficulty lies. It is true, the King and the laws permit us to refuse this coin of Mr. Wood, but at the same time it is equally true, that the King and the laws permit us to receive it. Now it is most certain the ministers in England do not suppose the consequences of uttering that brass among us to be so ruinous as we apprehend; because doubtless if they understood it in that light, they are persons of too much honour and justice not to use their credit with His Majesty for saving a most loyal kingdom from destruction. But as long as it shall please those great persons to think that coin will not be so very pernicious to us, we lie under the disadvantage of being censured as obstinate in not complying with a royal patent. Therefore nothing remains, but to make use of that liberty which the King and the laws have left us, by continuing to refuse this coin, and by frequent remembrances to keep up that spirit raised against it, which otherwise may be apt to flag, and perhaps in time to sink altogether. For, any public order against receiving or uttering Mr. Wood's halfpence is not reasonably to be expected in this kingdom, without directions from England, which I think nobody presumes, or is so sanguine to hope.
But to confess the truth, my lord, I begin to grow weary of my office as a writer, and could heartily wish it were devolved upon my brethren, the makers of songs and ballads, who perhaps are the best qualified at present to gather up the gleanings of this controversy. As to myself, it hath been my misfortune to begin and pursue it upon a wrong foundation. For having detected the frauds and falsehoods of this vile impostor Wood in every part, I foolishly disdained to have recourse to whining, lamenting, and crying for mercy, but rather chose to appeal to law and liberty and the common rights of mankind, without considering the climate I was in.
Since your last residence in Ireland, I frequently have taken my nag to ride about your grounds, where I fancied myself to feel an air of freedom breathing round me, and I am glad the low condition of a tradesman did not qualify me to wait on you at your house, for then I am afraid my writings would not have escaped severer censures. But I have lately sold my nag, and honestly told his greatest fault, which was that of snuffing up the air about Brackdenstown, whereby he became such a lover of liberty, that I could scarce hold him in. I have likewise buried at the bottom of a strong chest your lordship's writings under a heap of others that treat of liberty, and spread over a layer or two of Hobbes, Filmer, Bodin[22] and many more authors of that stamp, to be readiest at hand whenever I shall be disposed to take up a new set of principles in government. In the mean time I design quietly to look to my shop, and keep as far out of your lordship's influence as possible; and if you ever see any more of my writings upon this subject, I promise you shall find them as innocent, as insipid and without a sting as what I have now offered you. But if your lordship will please to give me an easy lease of some part of your estate in Yorkshire,[23] thither will I carry my chest and turning it upside down, resume my political reading where I left it off; feed on plain homely fare, and live and die a free honest English farmer: But not without regret for leaving my countrymen under the dread of the brazen talons of Mr. Wood: My most loyal and innocent countrymen, to whom I owe so much for their good opinion of me, and of my poor endeavours to serve them,
I am
with the greatest respect,
My Lord
Your Lordship's most obedient
and most humble servant,
M.B.
From my shop
in St. Francis-Street,
Dec. 14.
1724.
[Footnote 22: Sir Robert Filmer, the political writer who suffered for his adhesion to the cause of Charles I. His chief work was published after his death in 1680. It is entitled, "Patriarcha," and defends the patriarchal theory of government against the social-compact theory of Hobbes. Locke vigorously attacked it in his "Two Treatises on Government" published in 1690.
Jean Bodin, who died in 1596, wrote the "Livres de la Republique," a remarkable collection of information and speculation on the theoretical basis of political government. [T.S.]
[Footnote 23: Molesworth's estate in Yorkshire was at Edlington, near Tickhill. [T.S.]