That this legislation failed to produce the desired effect is shown by the experience of Philadelphia in dealing with negro disorder. Such disorder was complained of as early as 1693, when, on presentment of the grand jury, it was directed that the constables or any other person should arrest such negroes as they might find gadding abroad on first days of the week, without written permission from the master, and take them to jail, where, after imprisonment, they should be given thirty-nine lashes well laid on, to be paid for by the master. This seems to have been enforced but laxly, for in 1702 the grand jury presented the matter again, and their recommendation was repeated with warmth in the year following.[98] A few years later they urged measures to suppress the unruly negroes of the city.[99] In 1732 the council was forced to recommend an ordinance to bring this about, and such an ordinance was drawn up and considered. Next year the Monthly Meeting of Friends petitioned, and the matter was taken up again, but nothing came of it, so that the council was compelled to observe that further legislation was assuredly needed.[100] In 1741 the grand jury presented the matter strongly,[101] and an explicit order was at last given that constables should disperse meetings of negroes within half an hour after sunset.[102] The nuisance, probably, was still not abated, for in 1761 the mayor caused to be published in the papers previous legislation on the subject.[103] Nothing further seems to have been done. The continued failure to suppress these meetings in defiance of a law of the province, must be attributed either to the intrinsic difficulty of enforcing such a law, or to the fact that the meetings were objectionable because of their rude and boisterous character, rather than because of any positive misdemeanor. More probably still this is but one of the many pieces of evidence which show how leniently the negro was treated in Pennsylvania. The third period, from 1726 to 1780, is distinguished more because of the lack of important legislation about the negro than through any marked character of its own. The outlines of the colony's slave code had now been drawn, and no further constructive work was done. There is, however, one class of laws which may be assigned to this period, since the majority of them fall chronologically within its limits, though they are scarcely more characteristic of it than they are of either of the two periods preceding. All of these laws imposed restrictions upon the actions of negro slaves in matters in which white people were restricted also, but the restrictions were embodied in special sections of the laws, because of the negro's inability to pay a fine: the law imposing corporal punishment upon the slave, whenever it exacted payment in money or imprisonment from others.