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Mephistopheles ultimately prevails, and after the credit-money system is established and great prosperity ensues, the emperor's treasurer marvels: "There shall not be the faintest breath of trouble / I cherish a magician for my double" (6141–42). His advocate, the astrologer, favorably compares this scheme to the transmutation of base metals into gold, while the skeptics exclaim: "Oh, let us off, All warmed-up stuff / It's number mystic, Alchymistic" (Goethe 1976, 4973–74). In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles proposes that the emperor solve his financial problems by implementing a system of paper money, backed by his royal land and the gold hidden therein. History of Political Economy Annual Supplement to Volume 35 (2003) 234-261 The disagreement was about Newton's Chronology and its application to the Irish annalistic corpus as a means of validating the latter - not about the principle of its applicability, nor regarding the minutiae of dates or similar arcana, but to who should gain the credit for appropriating Newton's prestige to such a particularly Irish topic. Rather, it was wholly concerned with those most pertinent aspects of existence for an eighteenth century gentlemen - credit and honour. It was not even, at least not in any direct way, a rift over political issues regarding the penal laws and the status of papists in the Irish polity, a tendency quite prevalent among the fissiparous Catholic organisations and pugilistic personalities of this period. The dispute did not centre on some esoteric point of Irish mythology or any disagreement over issues of interpretation. 'A Gentleman of great Reputation' alleged Reily, had branded O'Conor with 'the meanest Species of Immorality'. The editor, Michael Reily (who went under the cognomen 'Civicus') was intricately involved in this dispute from its early stages and did not spare any criticism for the individual he deemed responsible, Dr John Fergus, the erstwhile friend and associate of both Reily and O'Conor.
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In the advertisement prefacing Charles O'Conor's Dissertations on the antient history of Ireland (1753), the editor challenged an unnamed gentleman who had, apparently, smeared the good name of the author.