Illinois men in Congress give a number of indications of the feeling of the people on questions having a more or less intimate relation to settlement. Constant and insistent demands for more land-offices, more post-roads, more pensions, donations of land for poor settlers, grants of land for internal improvements, the right of preëmption for squatters, and the reduction of the price of public lands show that the frontier was in favor of a liberal governmental expenditure.(372) Congressmen from Illinois, without exception, favored the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828.(373) In 1828, the only senator from Illinois who voted on the question, voted for the bill abolishing imprisonment for debt on processes issuing from a United States court.(374) Since Illinois early abolished such imprisonment, it is interesting to note that three hundred and thirty-eight persons were committed to the Essex county jail in New Jersey, for debt, in the year ending April 1, 1823, of whom one hundred and forty-one were in close confinement. The aggregate of debt was fifty-five thousand dollars.(375) Within the state one of the phenomena which has characterized frontier regions appeared about the year 1821. A desperate gang of immigrants had robbed and plundered until, after a most notable robbery, “a public meeting was held, and among other things, a company was formed, consisting of ten law-abiding men of well-known courage, who bound themselves together, under the name of the Regulators of the Valley, to rid the country of horse thieves and robbers.... A regular constitution was drawn up and subscribed to.” After the leader of the desperadoes had been killed the remainder fled.(376) A frontier condition is indicated also by the fact that when Sangamon county was formed, on January 30, 1821, a special law provided that housekeepers in the county should perform the duties and receive the privileges of freeholders. The same provision was made for Morgan county two years later. As land sales in the Sangamon country, in which these counties lay, did not begin until November, 1823, these laws probably resulted from the formation of counties whose entire population consisted of squatters.(377) The persistence of wolf bounties bears testimony to continued wild surroundings.(378) In 1829 alien Irish, and presumably all other aliens, could vote at all elections. An election law of this year provided that voting should be by the voter’s approaching the bar, in the election room, and naming in an audible voice the persons for whom he voted, or, if the voter preferred, by delivering to the judges a ballot which should be read aloud by them, the alternative being for the benefit of illiterate voters. Voting had previously been by ballot.(379)