Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 14]

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The Income of the University

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act of Congress of April 18, 1818, by which the people of Illinois Territory were allowed to form a constitution and state government, one-half of one per cent of the net proceeds of the lands lying within the state, which should be sold by Con* gress after January 1, 1819, was to be "exclusively bestowed on a college or university.{ - By the same act it was provided "That thirty-six sections, or one entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the United States, together with the one heretofore reserved for that purpose, shall be reserved for the use of a seminary of learning, and vested in the legislature of said State, to be appropriated solely to the use of such seminary by the said legislature.'* The income from the college and seminary funds was annually borrowed by the state government from 1829 until 1857. Sometimes this money was used for the support of the common school system, but it appears to have been placed frequently in the general fund of the state to obviate a levy of the necessary taxes for the operation of the state government.4 When the establishment of the Illinois State Normal University was authorized in 1857 the interest on the college and seminary funds was appropriated to the support of that institution. This income has been shared equally with the Southern Illinois Normal University since the establishment of the latter in 1869.5 The income of the seminary funds which had been borrowed up to 1857 was never returned by the state, but the borrowed income of the college fund was restored by an act passed in 1861,6 No part of the proceeds of either the college or the seminary funds has ever been received by the University of Illinois. It is to be noticed that in the case of each of the various federal grants made from 1862 on, it was the purpose of the general government to require the states to cooperate in the maintenance of the work of the institution established as a

•El. School 111. School T01. School •111. School Beport, Beport, Beport, Beport, 1881-2, p. cxxiii 1881-2, pp. exxxiii and oxxxiv 1881-2, p. cxxxv 1881-2, p. cxxxvii