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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Illinois Considers Disposition of Donation 209 turn denounce and slander us for daring to come at once before the representatives of the people and ask that the State accept the handsome gift tendered by our county thus refusing the mediatorship of their graces. Political mendicants who have looked to such occasions as this for opportunities to set themselves up for sale to towns asking for the location of a State Institution, snap and snarl, curse and s^ear, because our proposition looks to a settlement of the question, by the representatives of the people, in a fair and open manner, thus cutting off their opportunity, as members of the proposed locating commission, of receiving themselves from rival towns the money which should go for the benefit of the Institution, instead of towards the purchase of these men who are always in the market for such occasions. The Gazette in the same article scored the Chicago Tribune for favoring the commission plan of locating the college. The Illinois State Journal printed an article about the same time written by a friend of the agriculturists that declared the Tribune was on both sides of the fence. The author thought the Tribune was right on one point, the location of the college by a commission. On this point the writer aimed a fiery shaft at Champaign county: "Indeed the only opposition to this feature of the House bill, so far as I can learn, has emanated from an effort at town lot speculation some years ago, on a naked tract of land lying between Champaign and Urbana, in the East part of the State. A certain company, it seems, undertook some years ago to lay that tract off in lots, and bring them into market by building on it a school or seminary of some sort. They have since, in some way, transferred their rights to Champaign County, and made that county the ostensible profferers of the donation. It is a quite respectable bid, for the first time. But it probably does not amount to one half the amount of money which the location of the University there will give of additional value to their naked town lots, aside from all its other advantages to the place. Of course these bidders are exceedingly jealous of throwing the thing, in any way, open to the public, and particularly jealous of town lot speculators in Chicago! and elsewhere. They keep a troop of men here lobbying for their interests, all
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