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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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226 History University of Illinois nately, there were those who saw its absurdities clearly at that time. The Jacksonville Daily Journal for example, said in exposing the weakness of the proposition of the college men: " F r o m so much of their action as looks to a division of the agricultural college fund, and its appropriation to a number of existing colleges, in the form of one professorship to each, we must respectfully dissent. Our general views on the agricultural college question were expressed during the last session of the legislature, and we have no good reason to change them. In our opinion the agricultural fund should be invested in establishing the highest course of free instruction in those branches of science • which are related to agriculture and the mechanic a r t s / and not in adding a professor of agriculture or agricultural and mechanical science, to existing institutions. If the entire fund were added to some existing college, giving it a great superiority in those branches of instruction as could be attained by judicious application of the proceeds of the congressional land grant, we can conceive that the spirit of the law might be thus carried out, though such a plan would not be free from objections of a denominational nature. But to divide the fund into fractions, and make a certain number of existing colleges a trifle more efficient than they are now, in respect to scientific studies, and not one of them preeminently so, seems to us equally at war with the spirit of the law and with the best interest of the state. The law certainly requires that the ' leading object\ of the college or colleges established by the congressional grant, shall be to teach those branches which are related to agriculture and mechanic arts. How the * leading object' of any existing college would be changed by the addition of one professorship in the manner suggested we do not perceive, nor can we see how it would be worth while for any existing college to change its object for so small a compensation." 22 There appeared during the month of November in the Chicago Tribune a series of articles by President Blanchard in defense of the colleges and their plan to divide the agricultural college fund. His argument for the division of the funds was as follows: "The effect of the diffused plan must begin on the n * £ I * w Jack*mville Journal, November 2, 1866.
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