better drawn up, and better edited, than those of a later period, when
illiterate tricksters, conscious of the party strength behind them,
insisted on shaping legislation according to their own fancy. The men
of cultivation wielded an influence in the Legislature entirely out of
proportion to their numbers, as the ruder sort of pioneers were
naturally in a large majority. The type of a not uncommon class in
Illinois tradition was a member from the South who could neither read
nor write, and whose apparently ironical patronymic was Grammar. When
first elected he had never worn anything except leather; but regarding
his tattered buckskin as unfit for the garb of a lawgiver, he and his
sons gathered hazelnuts enough to barter at the nearest store for a
few yards of blue strouding such as the Indians used for breech-
clouts. When he came home with his purchase and had called together
the women of the settlement to make his clothes, it was found that
there was only material enough for a very short coat and a long pair
of leggins, and thus attired he went to Kaskaskia, the territorial
capital. Uncouth as was his appearance, he had in him the raw material
of a politician. He invented a system--which was afterwards adopted by
many whose breeches were more fashionably cut--of voting against every
measure which was proposed. If it failed, the responsibility was
broadly shared; if it passed and was popular, no one would care who
voted against it; if it passed and did not meet the favor of the
people, John Grammar could vaunt his foresight. Between the men like
Coles and the men like Grammar there was a wide interval, and the
average was about what the people of the State deserved and could
appreciate. A legislator was as likely to suffer for doing right as
for doing wrong. Governor Ford, in his admirable sketch of the early
history of the State, mentions two acts of the Legislature, both of
them proper and beneficial, as unequaled in their destructive
influence upon the great folks of the State. One was a bill for a loan