bestow on the most loyal subjects, we have reason to
expect it: Neither hath this kingdom any way deserved to be sacrificed
to one "single, rapacious, obscure, ignominious projector."

[Footnote 7: A hint at the Duchess of Kendal's influence in the
procuring of the patent. [T.S.]]

Among other clauses mentioned in this patent, to shew how advantageous
it is to Ireland, there is one which seems to be of a singular nature,
that the patentee shall be obliged, during his term, "to pay eight
hundred pounds a year to the crown, and two hundred pounds a year to the
comptroller."[8] I have heard indeed that the King's council do always
consider, in the passing of a patent, whether it will be of advantage to
the crown, but I have likewise heard that it is at the same time
considered whether the passing of it may be injurious to any other
persons or bodies politic. However, although the attorney and solicitor
be servants to the King, and therefore bound to consult His Majesty's
interest, yet I am under some doubt whether eight hundred pounds a year
to the crown would be equivalent to the ruin of a kingdom. It would be
far better for us to have paid eight thousand pounds a year into His
Majesty's coffers, in the midst of all our taxes (which, in proportion,
are greater in this kingdom than ever they were in England, even during
the war) than purchase such an addition to the revenue at the price of
our _utter undoing_.

[Footnote 8: By the terms of the patent, Wood covenanted to pay to the
King's clerk, or comptroller of the coinage, L200 yearly, and L100 per
annum into his Majesty's exchequer, and not as Walpole's report has it,
L800 and L200. [T.S.]]

But here it is plain that fourteen thousand pounds are to be paid by
Wood, only as a small circumstantial charge for the purchase of his
patent, what were his other visible costs I know not, and what were his
latent, is variously conjectured. But he must be surely a man of some
wonderful merit. Hath he saved any other kingdom at his own expense, to
give him a title of reimbursing himself by the destruction of ours? Hath
he discovered the longitude or the universal medicine? No. But he hath
found out the philosopher's stone after a new manner, by debasing of
copper, and resolving to force it upon us for gold.

When the two Houses represented to His Majesty, that this patent to Wood
was obtained in a clandestine manner, surely the Committee could not
think the Parliament would in