shops were found open on Christmas day,
and on Good Friday, and on the different fast-days which had been
appointed, they were taken up and punished by the magistrates on the one
hand, and insulted and beaten by the people on the other. But,
notwithstanding this ill usage, they persevered as rigidly in the
non-observance of particular days and times, as in their non-compliance
with oaths, and they still persevere in it. It does not appear, however,
that their bearing of their testimony in this case is any longer a
source of much vexation or trouble to them: for though the government of
the country still sanctions the consecration of particular days, and,
the great majority of the people join in it, there seems, to have been a
progressive knowledge or civilization in both, which has occasioned them
to become tender on account of this singular deviation from their own
practice.

But though the Quakers have been thus relieved by the legislature, and
by the more mild and liberal disposition of the people, from so much
suffering in bearing their testimony on the two occasions which have
been mentioned, yet there are others, where the laws of government are
concerned, on which they find themselves involved in a struggle between
the violation of their consciences and a state of suffering, and where
unfortunately there is no remedy at hand, without the manifestation of
greater partiality towards them, than it may be supposed an equal
administration of justice to all would warrant.

Hie first of these occasions is when military service, is enjoined. The
Quakers, when drawn for the militia, refuse either to serve, or to
furnish substitutes. For this refusal they come under the cognizance of
the laws. Their property, where they have any, is of course distrained
upon, and a great part of a little substance is sometimes taken from
them on, this account. Where they have not distrainable property, which
is occasionally the case, they never fly, but submit to the known
punishment, and go patiently to prison. The legislature, however, has
not been inattentive to the Quakers even upon this occasion; for it has
limited their confinement to three months. The government also of the
country afforded lately, in a case in which the Quakers were concerned,
an example of attention to religious scruples upon this subject. In the
late bill for arming the country _en masse_, both the Quakers and the
Moravians were exempted from military service. T