Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1868 [PAGE 128]

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regard for the interests of the University, and justice to the States in which our lands are located, seem to demand that the earliest practicable measures shall be taken to bring these lands into market, and to induce actual settlers to purchase them. If the lands should be properly catalogued and described, and some order be made for their sale at stipulated prices, doubtless we might soon begin to realize something from them. An order is now on your records for the location of 25,000 acres additional to those before located. This, you will recollect, leaves you 50,000 acres of scrip undisposed of. Ought not some power to be lodged in the Finance or Executive Committee to take advantage of the market, if a sale is to be made, or to locate if they find it desirable to make further locations ? I offer this suggestion with much diffidence, because of the importance of the interests involved, and the difficulty of devising any policy against which serious objections do not lie. In closing this hastily prepared report, I cannot but congratulate you, gentlemen, on the success that has thus far attended your labors. Your plans have received he warm commendation of many of the best and wisest men, both in our own and other States. The few hostile criticisms which have found their way to the public eye or ear, have been based either upon an innocent misunderstanding or an intentional misrepresentation of our course and purposes. They have shown on their face that they were the productions of minds too narrow to comprehend the real aims of the University, or too prejudiced to judge it fairly. Such criticism will not seriously harm us. It may catch, for a moment, the unsuspicious, and may serve to feed a little the rancor of the unfriendly; but our triumphant success will more than vindicate us, and our noontide sun will shine all the brighter for the clouds which obscured its dawning. Invoking the blessing of a benificent Heaven upon our work, and commending it to the wise charities of our fellow citizens, it remains only for us to move steadily forward, with unfaltering purpose and humble trust, to the great ends set before us. [Signed] J. M. GREGORY.