To explain the nature and business of the monthly or first of these
meetings, I shall fix upon some county in my own mind, and describe the
business, that is usually done in this in the course of the month. For
as the business, which is usually transacted in any one county, is done
by the Quakers in the same manner and in the same month in another, the
reader, by supposing an aggregate of counties, may easily imagine, how
the whole business of the society is done for the whole kingdom.
The Quakers[21] usually divide a county into a number of parts,
according to the Quaker-population of it. In each of these divisions
there are usually several meeting-houses, and these have their several
congregations attached to them. One meeting-house, however, in each
division, is usually fixed upon for transacting the business of all the
congregations that are within it, or for the holding of these monthly
courts. The different congregations of the Quakers, or the members of
the different particular meetings, which are settled in the northern
part of the county, are attached of course to the meeting-house, which
has been fixed upon in the northern division of it because it gives them
the least trouble to repair to it on this occasion.
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