Workmen who were digging in Congress Street [Boston] the other day found
an interesting old coin which is said by experts to link the records of
Boston currency nearly two centuries ago with a mintage controversy that
stirred even the phlegmatic George III, and elicited some of the most
famous witticisms of Dean Swift and dignified declarations of Sir Isaac
Newton. It is about one third larger than an American quarter and has on
the obverse side an idealized head of George III, in the center,
surrounded with the words “Georgius Deo Gratia Rex.” Perhaps the
intrinsic interest is in the reverse side, which has in the center a
symbolic figure of Ireland, bearing a harp, and on the border is stamped
“Hibernia—1723.” The first anomaly in this is that, although it was on
its face an Irish coin, it was neither coined nor circulated in that
country, but, owing to indignant protests of Irish dealers, crystallized
by the sarcasms of that witty divine, Dean Swift, it was shipped over to
Boston, where it circulated as the “colonial half-penny.” In the old
country it was called the “Woods half-penny,” on account of its coinage
by a Londoner of that name. This was the chief element of grievance, as
Ireland was then approaching the time when the aspiration of a Grattan
were to find realization, and Swift argued in his famous Drapier letters
that the country should not have these foreign and false coins passed
upon it.—(_Boston Transcript_, October 12, 1895.)