The common weight of this halfpence is between four and five to an ounce, suppose five, then three shillings and four-pence will weigh a pound, and consequently twenty shillings will weigh six pound butter weight. Now there are many hundred farmers who pay two hundred pound a year rent. Therefore when one of these farmers comes with his half-year's rent, which is one hundred pound, it will be at least six hundred pound weight, which is three horse load.
If a 'squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes and wine and spices for himself and family, or perhaps to pass the winter here; he must bring with him five or six horses loaden with sacks as the farmers bring their corn; and when his lady comes in her coach to our shops, it must be followed by a car loaden with Mr. Wood's money. And I hope we shall have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth.
They say 'Squire Conolly [Speaker of the Irish House of Commons] has sixteen thousand pounds a year. Now if he sends for his rent to town, as it is likely he does, he must have two hundred and forty horses to bring up his half-year's rent, and two or three great cellars in his house for stowage. But what the bankers will do I cannot tell. For I am assured, that some great bankers keep by them forty thousand pounds in ready cash to answer all payments, which sum, in Mr. Wood's money, would require twelve hundred horses to carry it.
For my own part, I am already resolved what to do; I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks, and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper. I intend to truck with my neighbours the butchers, and bakers, and brewers, and the rest, goods for goods, and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart's blood till better times, or till I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy as my father did the brass money, in K. James's time,[4] I who could buy ten pound of it with a guinea....
When once the kingdom is reduced to such a condition, I will tell you what must be the end: The gentlemen of estates will all turn off their tenants for want of payment, because as I told you before, the tenants are obliged by their leases to pay sterling which is lawful current money of England; then they will turn their own farmers, as too many of them do already, run all into sheep where they can, keeping only such other cattle as are necessary, then they will be their own merchants and send their wool and butter and hides and linen beyond sea for ready money and wine and spices and silks. They will keep only a few miserable cottiers. The farmers must rob or beg, or leave their country. The shopkeepers in this and every other town, must break and starve: for it is the landed man that maintains the merchant, and shopkeeper, and handicraftsman.