opposition which went so far as to attempt to injure the financial
minister's reputation by fomenting jealousies and using the Wood patent
agitation to arouse against him the popular indignation; but this does
not explain away the fact itself. He lays some blame for the agitation
on Wood's indiscretion in flaunting his rights and publicly boasting of
what the great minister would do for him. At the same time he takes care
to censure the government for its misconduct in not consulting with the
Lord Lieutenant and his Privy Council before granting the patent. His
censure, however, is founded on the consideration that this want of
attention was injudicious and was the cause of the spread of exaggerated
rumours of the patent's evil tendency. He has nothing to say of the
rights and liberties of a people which had thereby been infringed and
ignored.

The English parliament had rarely shown much consideration for Irish
feelings or Irish rights. Its attitude towards the Irish Houses of
Legislation had been high-handed and even dictatorial; so that
constitutional struggles were not at all infrequent towards the end of
the seventeenth and during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
The efforts of Sir Constantine Phipps towards a non-parliamentary
government,[3] and the reversal by the English House of Lords of the
decision given by the Irish House of Lords in the famous Annesley case,
had prepared the Irish people for a revolt against any further attempts
to dictate to its properly elected representatives assembled in
parliament. Moreover, the wretched material condition of the people, as
it largely had been brought about by a selfish, persecuting legislation
that practically isolated Ireland commercially in prohibiting the
exportation of its industrial products, was a danger and a menace to the
governing country. The two nations were facing each other threateningly.
When, therefore, Wood began to import his coin, suspicion was