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Caption: Book - History of the University (Nevins)
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6 THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVEBSITY arrangement and bring down the whole obligation, with its regularly mounting increment, upon the people, and ready to frown upon the slightest movement towards a University. In 1835 it was provided that the annual interest, instead of being added to the principal, should be "loaned" to the school fund for distribution among the counties; and here was a renewed barrier to the establishment of a University. The counties knew well that there was little probability that this "loan" would ever be repaid. They were getting six per cent, yearly of the funds, and they needed it, for the lands set aside for the common schools had been wastefully administered by the State. Thus prejudiced against a State institution, indeed, it was not until just before the Civil War that they relinquished their grasp on this income. In 1857 the Legislature consented to the establishment of a Normal University at Bloomington, and thereafter practically all the interest on the funds was appropriated to it. The "college fund" amounted to about $120,000; the sum from the sale of the townships to about $60,000. The interest for the twenty-two years on the latter amount was never repaid, but part of that on the former was devoted to the erection of the Normal University buildings, and the remainder added to the principal in 1882, another Normal School having meanwhile come to share in the income from the fund. None of the money has ever gone to the University of Illinois. During the period from 1830 to 1850 only scattering and futile attempts were made to recover for a University this double fund, and the impression gained ground that afinaldissipation of it was not only legitimate but advisable. In 1833 a bill was offered locating
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