the grain furnished the horses.(182) Guide-posts were to be put up at the
forks of every public road.(183) No stray stock should be taken up between
the first of April and the first of November, unless the stray should have
broken into the inclosure of the taker-up.(184) In those days stock was
turned out and crops were fenced in. Prairies or cleared land were not to
be fired except between December 1 and March 10, unless upon one's own
land.(185) The following rates of county taxation were prescribed:

Horses, per head, not more than $.50
Neat cattle, not more than .12-1/2
Bond servant, not more than 1.00
Single man, 21 yrs. or older, with less than $200 worth of property, not
more than 2.00 nor less than .50
Retail merchants, not more than 10.00(186)

A bounty, varying at different times between 1799 and 1810 from 50 cents
to $2 per head, was given for killing wolves.(187) Imprisonment for debt,
a law antedating by many years similar laws in several of the other parts
of the United States, was practically abolished.(188) A frontier region
does not have that social stratification which makes oppression of the
debtor class easy. A county too poor to build a log jail without
difficulty is not likely to be so senseless as to make a practice of
confining and boarding its debtor class.

For the purpose of taxation land was to be listed in three classes
according to value. No specification as to the value of the respective
classes was prescribed. The tax was eighty-five, sixty, or twenty-five
cents per one hundred acres, according as land was first, second, or third
class. No unimproved land in Illinois was to be listed higher than second
class.(189)

The laws above cited were enacted by the legislature of the Northwest
Territory. In May, 1800, that territory was divided, the western part,
including Illinois, becoming Indiana Territory. This made the Illinois
country more distinctly frontier by again reducing it to the first grade
of territorial government, Indiana Territory, as such, not being
represented in Congress until December, 1805.(190) Among the reasons
advanced for dividing the Northwest Territory was the fact that in five
years there had been but one court for criminal cases in the three western
counties.(191)

Illinois soon sought admission to the second grade of territorial
government. In April, 1801, John Edgar wrote from Kaskaskia to St. Clair:
"During a few weeks past, we have put into ci