wholly on his side.[6]

[Footnote 6: The report of the assayers as abstracted by the Lords of
the Committee in their report is not accurately stated. Monck Mason
notes that the abstract omits the following passage: "But although the
copper was very good, and the money, one piece with another, was full
weight, yet the single pieces were not so equally coined in the weight
as they should have been." Nor is it shown that the coins assayed were
of the same kind as those sent into Ireland. The Committee's report
fails to see the question that must arise when it is noted that while in
England a pound of copper was made into twenty-three pence, yet for
Ireland Wood was permitted to make it into thirty pence, in spite of the
statement that the copper used in England was worth fivepence a pound
more than that used by Wood. [T.S.]]

But what need is there of disputing, when we have positive demonstration
of Wood's fraudulent practices in this point? I have seen a large
quantity of these halfpence weighed by a very skilful person, which were
of four different kinds, three of them considerably under weight. I have
now before me an exact computation of the difference of weight between
these four sorts, by which it appears that the fourth sort, or the
lightest, differs from the first to a degree, that, in the coinage of
three hundred and sixty tons of copper, the patentee will be a gainer,
only by that difference, of twenty-four thousand four hundred and
ninety-four pounds, and in the whole, the public will be a loser of
eighty-two thousand one hundred and sixty-eight pounds, sixteen
shillings, even supposing the metal in point of goodness to answer
Wood's contract and the assay that hath been made; which it infallibly
doth not. For this point hath likewise been enquired into by very
experienced men, who, upon several trials in many of these halfpence,