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trary, but that the people got along just as well as before and after. By act of Jan. 9, 1816, the duties of the judges of the court of appeals were more clearly defined, and a law relating to this court was amended in 1817 and the circuits reorganized; next by an act of June 12, 1818, a radical change was made. There being some obscurity in the county court act passed in 1814, its duties were more clearly defined by a supplemental act of the same session. The civil jurisdiction of the justice's court was in 1817 extended to $40.

Thus it will be observed that at a very early period the Legislature of Illinois fell into the habit, which became chronic, of changing and reorganizing the courts and modifying their jurisdiction at almost every session, down to the adoption of the constitution of 1848. Since then this species of legislation seems to have expended itself in the frequent changes of the terms of court in the various circuits. Next to changing and shifting the well settled principles of the law in its relation to the rights of property and the multifarious transactions of business, nothing is so pernicious as the varying of the means and modes of obtaining redress in our courts. Both ought to be permanent.

During the territorial existence of Illinois three general assemblies were elected by the people-the council holding over the second term. In 1814 Col. Benjamin Stephenson, father of the late gallant James W. Stephenson, of Gelena, was elected delegate to congress, and in 1816 Nathaniel Pope, who took his seat in congress December 1817. The legislature met every year at Kaskaskia, but the sessions were short. New counties were established from time to time; in 1815, the first formed by the legislature, was named Edwards, in honor of the governor. In 1815, White county was organized, named in honor of Capt. Isaac White, who fell at Tippecanoe; in 1816, Monroe, Crawford, Jackson, and Pope, the latter in honor of the newly elected delegate to congress; in 1816, Bond, in honor of Shadrack Bond, first Governor of the State afterward; and in 1818, Union, Franklin, and Washington counties were organized.

We subjoin a few specimens of curious legislation during territorial times. It will be observed that the Solons of that period thundered considerably in the preamble. By a law of September 17, 1809, to regulate the elections, all commissioned officers, either federal or territorial, except justices of the peace and militia officers, were made ineligible to a seat in either branch of the general assembly. The object of this law is not so clear, unless it was to avoid a monopoly of official dignity and importauce; but such proscription could not be brooked, and accordingly it fell by act of December 14, 1814, the preamble of which, consisting of 3 whereases, is as huge a specimen of gaseous buncomb to conceal a true intent, and make it appear that the law of 1809 was immensely oppressive to the people, as can be reclaimed from the early annals of political demagoguery in Illinois :

"WHEREAS, The free people of this Territory are as competent as their public servants to decide on whom it is their interest to elect to represent them in the general a sembly; and are too enlightened and independent to recognize the odious and aristocratical doctrine that they are their own worst enemies, or to admit that it is the duty of their representatives to save the people from themselves; and

"WHEREAS, This legislature, being composed of the servants, not the masters of the people, cannot without an arbitrary assumption of power impose restrictions upon the latter as to the choice of their representatives, which are not warranted by the express words or necessary implications of the ordinance from which the legislature derives its powers; and

"WHEREAS, The duties of the judges of the county court established by law are such as have heretofore been performed in the territory by justices of the peace, by whom they are also usually performed in many of the States, and there being nothing in the ordinance, nor any reason to exclude from a seat in the legislature those judges of the county, or surveyors, or prosecuting attorneys, that do not apply with equal force to military officers and justices of the peace, and the duties of the former being no more incompatable with a seat in the legislature than those of the latter, therefore," &c. By one short section of two or three lines, laws inconsistent with the above sentiments were abolished.

Another specimen, whose object is disclosed in the preamble, we cannot forbear to give:

“Whereas, Voters have hitherto been obliged to vote by ballot, and the ignorant as well as those in embarassed circumstances are thereby subject to be imposed upon by electioneering zealots; and

"WHEREAS, Itis inconsistent with the spirit of representative republican government, since the opening for bribery is so manifest which should ever be suppressed in such a government, for remedy whereof,” &c., when follow the sections abolishing the ballot. These reasons would hardly be tenable at the present time, and were doubtless false then.

"By an act of December 24, 1814, "To promote retaliation upon hostile Indians," we find evidences of the extreme measures of defence to which the pioneers had to resort. This may be difficult for us at this time, with a population exceeding 2,500,000, and the Indians many hundreds of miles away, to appreciate. The pre amble refers to the "hostile incursions of savages, their indiscrim inate slaughter of men, women and children. Experience shows that nothing so much tends to check those blood-thirsty mousters as retaliation," and "to encourage the bravery and enterprises of our fellow citizens and other persons hereafter engaged in frontier defences," it is enacted: 1. That when in such incursions into the settlements, the commission of murder or other depredations by Indians, citizens, rangers, or other persons who shall make prisoners of, or kill such Indians, shall receive a reward for each Indian taken or killed, of $50-if done by rangers or others enlisted in the defence of the country, $25 only. 2. That any person, having obtained permission from a commanding officer on the frontier to go into the territory of hostile Indians, who shall kill a warrior, or take prisoner a squaw or child, is entitled to a reward of $100 for each warrior killed, or squaw or child taken prisoner. 3. That any party of rangers, not exceeding 15, who ou leave granted make incursions into the country of hostile Indians, shall receive a reward of $50 for each warrior killed, or squaw or child taken prisoner.

In 1816 a retaliatory act was passed to prevent attorneys at law from Indiana practicing in any of the courts of Illinois, for the reason stated in the preamble, "Whereas, by a law now in force in the State of Indiana, persons who do not reside therein are not permitted to practice in the courts of the said State; and whereas, that restriction is illiberal, unjust, and contrary to those principles of liberality and reciprocity by which each and every State or territory should be governed, therefore," &c. The young Hoosier

State ought not to have put on such exalted airs; but, perhaps, she was right after all, as we find that by act of January 9, 1818, Illinois offered the following premiums for sustained indictments. In section 4, fixing the salary of prosecuting attorneys at $100, it is provided that in addition to his salary he shall receive "in each and every case of felony where his indictment is sustained the sum of $15;" and for other "presentments in cases less than felony, "if the indictment was sustained," he was to receive a perquisite of $5. But the most unaccountable feature of this law remains to be told. In section 6 it was provided that if the indictment was sustained, notwithstanding the accused should be acquitted by the traverse jury, the fee of the prosecuting attorney was to be paid by the prosecuting witness. What person, though never so good a citizen, in view of the quirks of the law, the finesse and the ability of counsel, and the notorious uncertainty of how any jury will decide, would, with the prospect of having such fee to pay, care to engage in an attempt to bring an offender to justice. A singular provision was contained in an act of Dec. 22, 1814, which did away with prosecution by an attorney, in cases of treason, murder, or other felony.

By an act of Dec. 31, 1817, the territory of Illinois was in a manner turned over to and parceled out between the medical doctors. It was divided into the east and west districts, the head quarters of the doctors being located at Carmi and Kasksakia, respectively. The incorporators comprised about all the doctors in the territory, and they proposed and were empowered to hold these extensive fields of practice for their exclusive use and benefit, unless every new comer, proposing to practice the healing art, should first be examined by their board and procure from them permission to do so, for the sum of $10, failing to do which, he was disqualified from collecting his fees in any court or before any magistrate. The act was repealed by the first legislature under the State government.

With the close of the war of 1812, and the cessation of Indian hostilities, the tide of emigration set into Illinois with a volume unequaled and strength unabated. To this prosperity contributed, in no small degree, the act of congress passed in 1813, granting the right of pre-emption to settlers upon the public domain. This was the first great lever to move Illinois forward in the path of empire. Prior to this, emigrants in four cases out of five "squatted" on the public lands, without right or title to what they were improving by their labor, and with the ever harrassing doubt that some speculator might spy out and buy their homes before they could do it themselves. Small and inferior improvements were of course the result, and prosperity lagged. To stimulate a man to industry and enterprise, let him be assured that his labor is not misapplied and his title is indisputable. Shadrach Bond, our delegate in congress at the time, contributed largely by his influence in procuring the passage of the act of pre-emption.

Prior to the close of the war of 1812, money was very scarce in the west. The pelts of the deer, raccoon, &c., for which there was a ready market, were to a certain extent a standard of exchange, and supplied in a manner the circulating medium. This condition of the country was greatly improved by the money distributed in the payment of the rangers and militia for their services during

the war, and by the increased immigration after its close. Besides, the territorial legislature, emulating the financial aspirations of Ohio and Kentucky, which had each authorized a number of banks, incorporated at its session of 1816, the Bank of Illinois, located at Shawneetown, and at the succeeding session, the banks of Edwardsville and Kaskaskia. They were banks of issue. And the legislature, not satisfied with this, very unjustly lent its aid in forcing the issue of these banks upon the people; not only these, but the issues of the banks of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, by the enactment of laws postponing the collection of debts unless the creditor would receive the notes of these banks, were thus likewise forced upon the people. Both became banks of deposit for the United States funds, arising from the sales of public lands, which they used as their own. The government lost by the Edwardsville bank, $54,000, for which judgment was obtained, but never collected; the Shawneetown bank eventually accounted to the government in full.

This made money, such as it was, abundant, times flush, and rendered a spirit of speculation rife, which was apparently a desirable state of affairs, if it had been all. The circulation of bank notes among a people largely ignorant and unused to them, afforded to the vicious a rare opportunity to set afloat quantities of counterfeit money. This evil became so great that, to restrain it, many of the best citizens of St. Clair county-did what no good citizen should ever do-organized themselves into "Regulating companies," as they designated themselves, to visit swift judgment and condign punishment in the forum of Judge Lynch, upon such offenders as were to their secret cabal proven guilty. A Dr. Estes, of Belleville, was chosen as their captain. Many makers or utterers of the base currency, and for other crimes, fell under their ban and were punished. It created great excitement in the country. Public opinion soon withdrew its countenance and condemned the order. After a few months time its organization ceased to exist. The visionary schemes of banking operations during territorial times culminated in the Cairo City charter, granted at the session of 1817-18. The low tongue of land between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at their confluence, was at a very early period regarded as the best position in the west for a great and important city, as it respects commercial advantages and local supply," as the preamble had it. Such a city, it was argued, must become of vast consequence to the prosperity of the territory. But this low point of land was frequently inundated; in answer to which it was further argued, that as the ordinary inundations of the two great rivers rarely happened simultaneously, an embankment might be constructed to effectually obviate the injurious consequences of floods. The proprietors and incorporators of the city and bank of Cairo were John G. Comyges, Thomas H. Harris, Charles Slade (afterwards member of Congress), Shadrach Bond (afterwards Governor), Michael Jones, Warren Brown, Edward Humphries, and Charles W. Hunter. These gentlemen proposed the following self-executing scheme to build up a large city there, pour wealth into their coffers, and at the same time render themselves public benefactors. The basis or capital of the banking institution was 2000 Cairo city lots, 66 by 120 feet, valued and limited at $150 each. The streets were to be 80 feet in width. As fast

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as the lots were sold $50 of the proceeds of each was to be devoted to the construction of a levee to secure them against the floods, and to the improvement of the city by the building of public edifices. The residue-being $100 per lot-was to constitute the cap ital of the bank, amounting to $200,000. Thus was a great city to be founded! Could Utopia go further? Of course the scheme proved a failure. Cairo languished for many years, but at the present, with actual capital, the power of nerve and muscle, and the concentration of railroads, she is making rapid strides toward the realization of her early dreams. During the internal improvement mania of 1837 this Cairo Bank was galvanized into life, but after flourishing a short period expired.

Another Utopia was the incorporation of a company, at the same session, for the cutting of a canal a few miles north of Cairo to unite the waters of the Mississippi with the Ohio, via the town of America, then in Johnson county, owned by the company. Tolls, wharfage charges, etc., under certain restrictions, were permitted to this company; but nothing came of it. The scheme was some 15 or 18 years since revived, in connection with the present Mound City.

Commerce throughout the early and territorial period of Illinois, and to no inconsiderable extent for some time afterward, was in its helpless infancy. All foreign products consumed here, either natural or manufactured, were brought to Illinois via New Orleans, in keel-boats, pushed at great labor, with long poles, and towed at points with long ropes, a process called "cordelling," against the strong current of the Mississippi, by the hardy boatmen of that day; or wagoned over the Alleghany mountains from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, or from Baltimore to Wheeling, thence in flat-boats floated down the Ohio and landed at convenient points, whence it was again taken by wagons to the final points of destination. A trip from St. Louis to New Orleans and back, with keel-boats, was a six months voyage. But a revolution in the carrying business of the world, was at hand. The power of steam had been utilized, and by Fulton successfully applied to the propulsion of vessels, which produced a wonderful effect upon the western country in contrast between steam as a motor for conveyance and the ordinary mode by keel or flat-boat, which inaugurated a new era. The first steamboat to ascend the Upper Mississippi, reached St. Louis August 2, 1817. It was named the "General Pike," and was commanded by Captain Jacob Reed.

[Of the first steamboat on the Ohio, the "New Orleans," which was launched at Pittsburgh in the summer of 1811, it is related that, "The novel appearance of the vessel, and the fearful rapidity with which the passage was made over the broad reaches of the river, excited a mixture of terror and surprise among many of the Settlers on the banks, whom the rumor of such an invention had never reached: and it is related that on the unexpected arrival of the boat before Louisville, in the course of a fine, still moonlight night, the extraordinary sound which filled the air as the pent up steam was allowed to escape from the valves, on rounding to, produced a general alarm, and multitudes in the town rose from their beds to ascertain the cause. The general impression among the good Kentuckians was, that the comet [of 1811, visible at the time with its immense fiery tail, and by the superstitious believed to be the harbinger of war and all sorts of dire evill, had fallen into the Ohio."

"She walked the waters like a thing of life,
And seemed to dare the elements of strife."

*

At Louisville, owing to the small depth of water on the falls, the boat was detained 3 weeks, during which time several trips were made by her between that place and Cincinnati. The waters finally rose, and the trip to New Orleans was resumed. On reaching the Lower Mississippi, the boat was nearly overwhelmed by the earthquakes which rocked the waters of the great river to and fro, and which continued for several days,

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