Some of the incidents of the summer of 1779 indicate difficulties of the new government. When the governor was to be absent for a short time, he wrote to Winston, who as commander of Kaskaskia would be acting governor, telling him not to impress property, and by all means to keep up a good understanding with Col. Clark and the officers. The judges of the court at Kaskaskia were ordered to hold court “at the usual place of holding court ... any adjournment to the contrary notwithstanding.” Richard McCarty, of Cahokia, wrote to the county-lieutenant complaining that the writer’s stock had been killed by the French inhabitants. McCarty had allowed his stock to run at large and they had destroyed uninclosed crops, which crops, he contended, were not in their proper place. Two months later, McCarty wrote from Cahokia: “Col. Todd residence hear will spoil the people intirely. I think it would be a happy thing could we get Colol Todd out of the country for he will possitively sett the Inhabitants and us by the Ears. I have wrote him a pritty sharp Letter on his signing a Death warrant against my poor hog’s for runing in the Oppen fields ... on some complaints by the Inhabitants the other day he wished that there was not a Soldier in the country.”(28) McCarty’s hogs were not his only trouble. A fellow-officer wrote: “I received a line from Capt. McCarty [captain of troops at Cahokia] yesterday. He is well. He writes to me that he has lost most of his French soldiers, and that the inhabitants are so saucy that they threaten to drive him and his soldiers away, telling him that he has no business there—nobody sent for him. They are very discontented. The civil law has ruined them.”(29) Col. Todd’s position was difficult because of the discontent prevailing among both the French and the Americans in Illinois. His salary was so small that he feared that he must sell his property in Kentucky to support himself while in public service. He regarded Kentucky as a much better place than Illinois for the ambitious man, the retired farmer, or the young merchant.(30) He had been scarcely more than three months in office when he wrote to the governor of Virginia: “I expected to have been prepared to present to your excellency some amendments upon the form of Government for Illinois, but the present will be attended with no great inconveniences till the Spring Session, when I beg your permission to attend and get a Discharge from an Office, which an unwholesome air, a distance from my connexions, a Language not familiar to me, and an impossibility of procuring many of the conveniences of Life suitable; all tend to render uncomfortable.”(31) This letter was intercepted by the British and did not reach the governor.