JAMES COINS BASE MONEY.

Nor was the king less arbitrary in the executive part of his government, if we suppose that he countenanced the grievous acts of oppression that were daily committed upon the protestant subjects of Ireland; but the tyranny of his proceedings may be justly imputed to the temper of his ministry, consisting of men abandoned to all sense of justice and humanity, who acted from the dictates of rapacity and revenge, inflamed with all the acrimony of religious rancour. Soldiers were permitted to live upon free quarter; the people were robbed and plundered; licenses and protections were abused in order to extort money from the trading part of the nation. The king’s old stores were ransacked; the shops of tradesmen and the kitchens of burghers were pillaged, to supply the mint with a quantity of brass, which was converted into current coin for his majesty’s occasions; an arbitrary value was set upon it, and all persons were required and commanded to take it in payment under the severest penalties, though the proportion between its intrinsic worth and currency was nearly as one to three hundred. A vast sum of this counterfeit coin was issued in the course of one year, and forced upon the protestants in payment of merchandize, provision, and necessaries for the king’s service. James, not content with the supply granted by parliament, imposed, by his own authority, a tax of twenty thousand pounds per month on chattels, as the former was laid upon lands. This seems to have been a temporary expedient during the adjournment of the two houses, as the term of the assessment was limited to three months; it was however levied by virtue of a commission under the seals, and seems to have been a stretch of prerogative the less excusable, as he might have obtained the money in a parliamentary way. Understanding that the protestants had laid out all their brass money in purchasing great quantities of hides, tallow, wool, and corn, he assumed the despotic power of fixing the prices of these commodities, and then bought them for his own use. One may see his ministers were bent upon the utter destruction of those unhappy people.