use 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
Mr. Wood's money, as my father did the brass money in K. James's time,
who could buy ten pound of it with a guinea, and I hope to get as
much for a pistole, and so purchase bread from those who will be such
fools as to sell it me.

These half-pence, if they once pass, will soon be counterfeit, because
it may be cheaply done, the stuff is so base. The Dutch likewise will
probably do the same thing, and send them over to us to pay for our
goods; and Mr. Wood will never be at rest but coin on: so that in some
years we shall have at least five times fourscore and ten thousand
pounds of this lumber. Now the current money of this kingdom is not
reckoned to be above four hundred thousand pounds in all; and while
there is a silver sixpence left, these blood-suckers will never be
quiet.

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 shop-keepers in this and every other town
must break and starve: for it is the landed man that maintains the
merchant, and shop-keeper, and handicraftsman.

But when the squire turns farmer and merchant himself, all the good
money he gets from abroad he will hoard up to send for England, and
kee