There was another element in western Missouri which did not tend to the improvement of its society. Western Missouri at the time of which I write, and as before remarked, was the frontier of the United States, and therefore a place of refuge for those who had outraged the laws of society elsewhere. Here they were near the boundary line of the United States, and if pursued by the officers of the law, in a few hours they could cross the line out of their reach, as the officers could not operate outside of their own nation. These outcasts helped to give a more desperate complexion to the already reckless population of western Missouri. The Saints could not join the Missourians in their way of life--in Sabbath-breaking, profanity, horse-racing, idleness, drunkenness, and debauchery. They had been commanded to keep the Sabbath day holy, to keep themselves unspotted from the sins of the world. The fact of people having so little in common with each other was of itself calculated to beget a coldness and suspicion, which would soon ripen into dislike. The saints, too, had come, for the most part, from the Northern and New England States, and the hatred that existed at that time between the people of the slave-holding and free states, was manifested toward the saints by their "southern" neighbors. Moreover, the old settlers were dear lovers of office, and the honors and emoluments growing out of it; and they greatly feared that the rapidly increasing saints would soon outnumber them, and that the offices would be wrested from them. Political jealousy is always cruel and unscrupulous; and is not slow to find excuses for destroying the object of its hatred. To the politician as well as to the lover, "Trifles light as air, Are to the jealous confirmations strong As proofs of Holy Writ." And where these "trifles" do not exist, we shall see in the progress of our narrative that sectarian meanness and political jealousy do not hesitate to manufacture them. As early as the spring of 1832 there began to appear signs of an approaching storm. In the deadly hours of the night the houses of some of the saints were stoned, the windows broken, and the inmates disturbed. In the fall of the same year a large quantity of hay in the stack belonging to the saints was burned, houses shot into, and the people insulted with abusive language. In the month of April, 1833, the old settlers to the number of some three hundred met at Independence, to consult upon a plan for the destruction, or immediate removal, of the "Mormons" from Jackson County. They were unable, however, to unite on any plan, and the mob becoming the worse for liquor, the affair broke up in a "Missouri row."