ad long been past use, were carried to the mint. In
a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near a million
sterling, intrinsically worth about a sixtieth part of that sum,
were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be
legal tender in all cases whatsoever. A mortgage for a thousand
pounds was cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old
kettles. The creditors who complained to the Court of Chancery were
told by Fitton to take their money and be gone.

But of all classes, the tradesmen of Dublin, who were generally
Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first, of course, they
raised their demands; but the magistrates of the city took on
themselves to meet this heretical inclination by putting forth a
tariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste now
dominant might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass
worth threepence, and carry off goods to the value of half a
guinea. Legal remedies were out of the question. Indeed the
sufferers thought themselves happy if, by the sacrifice of their
stock in trade, they could redeem their limbs and their lives.
There was not a baker's shop in the city round which twenty or
thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Some persons who
refused the base money were arrested by troopers and carried before
the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at them, locked them up
in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors,
soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of that time
none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of the
Protestants of Dublin than the plague of brass money. To the
recollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced by
James' coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition
which, thirty-five years later, large classes firmly attached to
the House of Hanover, offered to the government of George the First
in the affair of Woods' Patent.[4]

[4] Macaulay, _History of England_, I, chap. XII. "The Affair of
Woods' Patent" is celebrated in Swift's Drapier letters.

But paper money offers far more extensive facilities to knavery than a
metallic currency. In his _Essays on the Monetary History of the United
States_,[5] Mr. Charles J. Bullock has described in sufficient detail
the "carnival of fraud and corruption" which atte