cabals. He came out into the open to fight the good fight of the people
to whom courts and cabinets should be servants and not self-seeking
masters. Whatever doubts the people of Ireland may have had about the
legal validity of their resentment towards Wood and his coins, were
quickly dissipated when they read "A Letter to the Shop Keepers,
Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common People of Ireland, concerning the Brass
Half-pence coined by Mr. Wood," and signed, "M.B. Drapier." The letter,
as Lord Orrery remarked, acted like the sound of a trumpet. At that
sound "a spirit arose among the people, that in the eastern phrase, was
_like unto a trumpet in the day of the whirlwind_. Every person of every
rank, party, and denomination was convinced, that the admission of
Wood's copper must prove fatal to the Commonwealth. The papist, the
fanatic, the Tory, the Whig, all listed themselves volunteers under the
banners of M.B. Drapier, and were all equally zealous to serve the
Common cause."

The present text of the first of the Drapier's letters is based on that
given by Sir W. Scott, carefully collated with two copies of the first
edition which differed from each other in many particulars. One belonged
to the late Colonel F. Grant, and the other is in the British Museum. It
has also been read with the collection of the Drapier's Letters issued
by the Drapier Club in 1725, with the title, "Fraud Detected"; with the
London edition of "The Hibernian Patriot" (1730), and with Faulkner's
text issued in his collected edition of Swift's Works in 1735.

[T.S.]

[Illustration:
A
*LETTER*