recedents for patents
granted for coining for this kingdom, since the mixed money[12] in Queen
Elizabeth's time, during the difficulties of a rebellion: Whereas now
upon the greatest imposition that can possibly be practised, we must go
to England with our complaints, where it hath been for some time the
fashion to think and to affirm that "we cannot be too hardly used."
Again the Report says, that "such patents are obligatory." After long
thinking, I am not able to find out what can possibly be meant here by
this word _obligatory_. This patent of Wood neither obligeth him to
utter his coin, nor us to take it, or if it did the latter, it would be
so far void, because no patent can oblige the subject against law,
unless an illegal patent passed in one kingdom can bind another and not
itself.

[Footnote 12: "Civill warre having set all Ireland in a combustion, the
Queene [Elizabeth] more easily to subdue the rebels, did take silver
coyne from the Irish, some few years before her death, and paid her army
with a mixed base coyne, which, by proclamation, was commanded to be
spent and received, for sterling silver money. This base mixed money had
three parts of copper, and the fourth part of silver, which proportion
of silver was in some part consumed by the mixture, so as the English
goldsmiths valued a shilling thereof at no more than two silver pence,
though they acknowledged the same to be worth two pence halfpenny."
(Fynes Moryson's "Itinerary," pt. i., p. 283). [T.S.]]

Lastly, it is added that "such patents are in no manner derogatory or
invasive of any liberty or privilege of the King's subjects of Ireland."
If this proposition be true, as it is here laid down, without any
limitation either expressed or implied, it must follow that a King of
England may at any time coin copper money for Ireland, and oblige his
subjects here to take a piece of copper under the value of half a
farthing for half-a-crown, as was practised by the late King James, and
even without that arbitrary prince's excuse, from the necessity and
exigences of his affairs. If this be in no manner "derogatory nor
evasive of any liberties or privileges of the subjects of Ireland," it
ought to have been expressed what our liberties and privileges are, and
whether we have any at all, for in specifying the word _Ireland_,
instead of saying "His Majesty's subjects," it would seem to insinuate
that we are not upon the same foot with our fellow-subjects in
_E