Viewing the Old World as again under the curse of monarchy, and the new-comers as refugees from oppression, the Republican party found itself ready to arrange for the easiest possible disposal of the public lands. "Let them come," said one writer. "Good and wholesome laws with the avenues to wealth and independence opened to honest industry will tame even Mr. Peel's 'Untamably ferocious' Irishmen! as well as suppress English mobs crying for employment and bread, without the use of the bayonet." Descriptions of the economic unrest in Europe following the close of the Napoleonic wars were fully circulated in American newspapers. The number of bankruptcies, the idle custom-house clerks, the labouring poor applying at the different sessions for certificates to migrate to America, the British vessels anticipating desertions by sailing for the New World with double crews, the steps taken by the British Government to prevent artisans from leaving, the ruse of coming through Canada to escape question and detention--all this was delightful reading for the American public. Many of the emigrants passed the Allegheny barrier, notwithstanding the hardships of travel, to make homes in the new States and Territories of the West and South-west. Birkbeck and his colony of Englishmen came to southern Illinois. The Rappites planted the community of New Harmony on the Wabash in Indiana. Congress granted land to a colony of refugees in Alabama. Numerous towns were laid out on the upper Mississippi and the Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase. Protecting garrisons were established far up the Missouri River and at the Falls of St. Anthony, near the headwaters of the Mississippi, "two thousand miles from the sea." Buffalo and Erie, names not to be found upon the map before the war, were now busy ports with a thriving lake commerce. Semi-weekly posts were carried to Detroit, Green Bay, and far Michilimackinac.