Illinois, and leaving out of consideration {XX} for the moment--since they have already been acknowledged--the individual acts of kindness bestowed upon the exiles, was this reception of the Saints by Illinois wholly disinterested? Were there not benefits which the Saints could bestow upon the state in return for the heartiness of the reception given? Would it not have been, under all the circumstances, the gravest of blunders for Illinois to have refused asylum to these exiles? Is it to be presumed that the public men of western Illinois were so blind to their own interests as not to see in these twelve or fifteen thousand people a mighty advantage to the state? It is true they were poor in this world's goods; but they were rich in labor-power, and their reputation for habits of sobriety and of industry had preceded them. Here were thousands of husbandmen seeking lands. Illinois had thousands of acres of unoccupied lands awaiting husbandmen. How shortsighted and unstatesman-like it would have been for the men of Illinois not to have welcomed these settlers into their state? With half an eye it is easy to see that the benefits of this reception of the exiled Mormons by Illinois is not by any means a one-sided affair; and it would be doing an injustice to the intelligence of the people of that state to suppose they were blind to these advantages. This will more fully appear when other conditions are taken into account. Illinois has an area of 56,650 square miles; and at the time of the advent of the Saints in that state a white population of less than four hundred thousand, [1] as against a present population of five and a half millions. [2] It will be seen, then, that in 1839, the year of the advent of the Saints into that state, Illinois was very sparsely settled, and needed above all things for her development and prosperity, people to subdue her wilderness and cultivate her rich lands, especially people desirous of making homes, and becoming permanent citizens. Moreover, Illinois had recently launched an extensive system of internal improvements by state aid. This system included the construction of 1,300 miles of railroads in the state, besides provisions for the improvement of the navigation of the Kaskaskia, Illinois, Great and Little Wabash, and Rock rivers. Also the construction of a canal from Lake Michigan to the navigable waters of the Illinois river, a distance of more than one hundred miles (from Chicago to Peru). To carry out this system of internal improvements the state legislature of 1836-7 had appropriated the sum of $12,000,000; and to raise the money state bonds were placed on the stock markets of the eastern states and in England. It is not my province here even to note the wisdom or unwisdom of this policy of wholesale state aid for these internal improvements; let the wisdom {XXI} or unwisdom be what it may, these conditions emphasized Illinois' demand for population,