These disorders had been brought on by degrees in consequence of
the severe labours necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause.
For seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred
persons with my own hand. I had some book or other annually to write in
behalf of the cause. In this time I had travelled more than thirty-five
thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of these journeys
in the night. All this time my mind had been on the stretch. It had been
bent too to this one subject; for I had not even leisure to attend to my
own concerns. The various instances of barbarity, which had come
successively to my knowledge within this period, had vexed, harassed,
and afflicted it. The wound which these had produced, was rendered still
deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from
the reiterated refusal of persons to give their testimony, after I had
travelled hundreds of miles in quest of them. But the severest stroke
was that inflicted by the persecution, begun and pursued by persons
interested in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had
been examined against them; and whom, on account of their dependent
situation in life, it was most easy to oppress.
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