On the other hand there was a population in western Illinois, and perhaps more especially in Hancock county, which had more than its full share of lawless and desperate men; who, as by a law of social gravitation, seek the frontiers of civilization. Moreover it is notorious that the whole upper Mississippi was a rendezvous for gamblers, counterfeiters, horse thieves, murderers and other criminals that infested the great river, which gave easy ingress and egress to a frontier wilderness on the one hand, and to such centers of population and activity, on the other, as New Orleans, St. Louis, and many minor places, besides. "I must give some account of the anti-Mormons," says Governor Ford in his History of Illinois, when referring to the inhabitants of Hancock county. "I had a good opportunity to know the settlers of Hancock county," he continues. "I had attended the circuit courts there as state's attorney, from 1830, when the county was first organized, up to 1834: and to my certain knowledge the early settlers, with some honorable exceptions, were in popular languages hard cases" (page 406). Then for a period of several years to the advent of the "Mormons" he had no means of knowing the character of the people who drifted into the country: "But," he adds, "having passed my whole life on the frontier, on the outer edge of the settlements, I have frequently seen that a few first settlers would fix the character of a settlement for good or for bad, for many years after its commencement. If bad men began the settlement, bad men would be attracted to them, upon the well known principle that birds of a feather will flock together. Rogues will find each other out, and so will honest men. From all which it appears extremely probable, that the later {XXVII} immigrants were many of them attracted to Hancock by a secret sympathy between them and the early settlers."