A real act of persecution affected him more seriously, as it was the ruin of another person in whom he was interested.

There was an old regulation forbidding the hiring out of convicts who were assigned to residents as domestic servants, but this had been virtually repealed by another under Macquarie, permitting such hiring out on the owners complying with certain rules.

These had been duly attended to by Mr.
Marsden in the case of one James Ring, a plumber and glazier, who, as a reward for good conduct, was allowed to go out to work in Paramatta for his own profit.

Being ill-used and beaten by another servant, he summoned the man before the bench of magistrates, but these, who had been put in when Mr.Marsden and his colleagues were dismissed, immediately committed Ring to jail for being at large.

His master went to demand his release, showing that the rules had been observed, but the magistrates replied by levying a fine of two-and-sixpence for every day that Ring had been at work, and as Marsden did not offer to pay, they sent a convict constable to his house to seize property to that amount, while poor Ring himself was sent to work in irons with the penal gang; though at that very moment one of the magistrates had a servant, a tailor, at work in Mr.Marsden's house; and another person had two hired convicts of another of these justices employed at his home.