So that if I had then appeared with
and amongst them, I had in all likelihood been sent to gaol with
them for company, and that under the imputation of a plotter, than
which nothing was more contrary to my profession and inclination.
But though I came off so easily, it fared not so well with others;
for the storm increasing, many Friends in divers parts, both of city
and country, suffered greatly; the sense whereof did deeply affect
me, and the more for that I observed the magistrates, not thinking
the laws which had been made against us severe enough, perverted the
law in order to punish us. For calling our peaceable meetings
riots, which in the legal notion of the word riot is a contradiction
in terms, they indicted our friends as rioters for only sitting in a
meeting, though nothing was there either said or done by them, and
then set fines on them at pleasure.
This I knew to be not only against right and justice, but even
against law; and it troubled me to think that we should be made to
suffer not only by laws made directly against us, but even by laws
that did not at all concern us.
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