A restless feeling of hazardous speculation seemed to be taking possession of the State. "It commenced," says Governor Ford, in his admirable chronicle, "at Chicago, and was the means of building up that place in a year or two from a village of a few houses to be a city of several thousand inhabitants. The story of the sudden fortunes made there excited at first wonder and amazement; next, a gambling spirit of adventure; and lastly, an all-absorbing desire for sudden and splendid wealth. Chicago had been for some time only one great town-market. The plots of towns for a hundred miles around were carried there to be disposed of at auction. The Eastern people had caught the mania. Every vessel coming west was loaded with them, their money and means, bound for Chicago, the great fairy-land of fortunes. But as enough did not come to satisfy the insatiable greediness of the Chicago sharpers and speculators, they frequently consigned their wares to Eastern markets. In fact, lands and town lots were the staple of the country, and were the only article of export." The contagion spread so rapidly, towns and cities were laid out so profusely, that it was a standing joke that before long there would be no land left in the State for farming purposes. The future of the State for many years to come was thus discounted by the fervid imaginations of its inhabitants. "We have every requisite of a great empire," they said, "except enterprise and inhabitants," and they thought that a little enterprise would bring the inhabitants. Through the spring and summer of 1836 the talk of internal improvements grew more general and more clamorous. The candidates for office spoke about little else, and the only point of emulation among the parties was which should be the more reckless and grandiose in its promises. When the time arrived for the assembling of the Legislature, the members were not left to their own zeal and the recollection of their campaign pledges, but meetings and conventions were everywhere held to spur them up to the fulfillment of their mandate. The resolutions passed by the principal body of delegates who came together in December directed the Legislature to vote a system of internal improvements "commensurate with the wants of the people," a phrase which is never lacking in the mouth of the charlatan or the demagogue. [Sidenote: "Ford's History," p. 184.]