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Of course these gifts were not only graciously accepted, but duly returned; cakes, apples, tarts, and gingerbread, halfpence in profusion, and now and then a new shilling, or a bright sixpence all, in short, that poor Phoebe had to bestow, she showered upon her uncouth favourite, and she would fain have amended his condition by more substantial benefits: but authoritative as she was with her grandfather in other instances, in this alone her usual powers of persuasion utterly failed.
After all, my ears, though not very nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially when confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years old, perhaps, and rather pretty; clean, too, and neatly dressed, very unlike all other street and vagabond children whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give him their halfpence more readily than to any other musicians who infest the boat.
An unlearned and so unworthy physician is a kind of horse-leech, whose cure is most in drawing of blood, and a desperate purge, either to cure or kill, as it hits. His discourse is most of the cures that he hath done, and them afar of; and not a receipt under a hundred pounds, though it be not worth three halfpence.
I don't think she ever saw anything, or ever looked at anything; and she had always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all her might and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of it. Davis, she invariably cut him short by saying, 'There, God bless the man, don't worrit me!
They represent, That the patent had been obtained in a clandestine and unprecedented manner, and by notorious misrepresentations of the state of Ireland; That if the terms of the patent had been complied with, this coinage would have been of infinite loss to the kingdom, but that the patentee, under colour of the powers granted to him, had imported and endeavoured to utter great quantities of different impressions, and of less weight, than required by the patent, and had been guilty of notorious frauds and deceit in coining the said copper money: And they humbly beseech your Majesty, that you would give such directions, as in your great wisdom you should think proper, to prevent the fatal effects of uttering any half pence or farthings by virtue of the said patent: And the House of Commons of Ireland, in a second address upon this subject, pray, That your Majesty would be pleased to give directions to the several officers intrusted in the receipt of your Majesty's revenue, That they do not on any pretence whatever, receive or utter any of the said copper halfpence or farthings.
"He won't have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea," Mr. Bungay said of the Captain, as he and his two companions walked away from the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs. Shandon came to empty her husband's pockets, she found but a couple of shillings, and a few halfpence out of the morning's remittance.
And that your Majesty's royal predecessors have exercised this undoubted prerogative of granting to private persons the power and privilege of coining copper halfpence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, was proved to this Committee by several precedents of such patents granted to private persons by King Charles II. and King James II. none of which were equally beneficial to your kingdom of Ireland, nor so well guarded with proper covenants and conditions for the due execution of the powers thereby granted, although the power and validity of those patents, and a due compliance with them, was never in any one instance, till this time, disputed or controverted.
Thus five or six little idle creatures, who might be earning a trifle by knitting at home, who might be useful to the public by working in the field, and who might assist their families by learning to get their bread twenty honest ways, are suffered to lie about all day, in the hope of a few chance halfpence, which, after all, they are by no means sure of getting.
Supposing that in selling him a ticket the company said, "We will change you a sovereign, but we shall charge you three halfpence for doing so," what would my typical man exclaim? Yet that is the equivalent of what the company does when it robs him of five minutes twice a day. You say I am dealing with minutiae. I am. And later on I will justify myself.
Old Melmoth died in the course of that night, and died as he had lived, in a kind of avaricious delirium. John could not have imagined a scene so horrible as his last hours presented. He cursed and blasphemed about three halfpence, missing, as he said, some weeks before, in an account of change with his groom, about hay to a starved horse that he kept.
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