With great respect to those honourable persons, the committee of council in London, I have not understood them to be our governors, councillors, or judges. Neither did our case turn at all upon the questions whether Ireland wanted halfpence or no. For there is no doubt, but we do want both halfpence, gold, and silver; and we have numberless other wants, and some that we are not so much as allowed to name, although they are peculiar to this nation; to which no other is subject, whom God has blessed with religion and laws, or any degree of soil and sunshine; but for what demerits on our side, I am altogether in the dark. But I do not remember that our want of halfpence was either affirmed or denied in any of our addresses or declarations against those of Wood. We alleged the fraudulent obtaining and executing of his patent; the baseness of his metal; and the prodigious sum to be coined, which might be increased by stealth, from foreign importation and his own counterfeits, as well as those at home; whereby we must infallibly lose all our little gold and silver, and all our poor remainder of a very limited and discouraged trade. We urged, that the patent was passed without the least reference hither; and without mention of any security given by Wood, to receive his own halfpence upon demand; both which are contrary to all contrary proceedings in the like cases. These, and many other arguments, we offered, but still the patent went on; and at this day our ruin would have been half completed, if God in His mercy had not raised a universal detestation of these halfpence in the whole kingdom, with a firm resolution never to receive them; since we are not under obligations to do so by any law, either human or divine.