Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 264]

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History University of Illinois

as it now seems, in a sort of fit of sonnambulism, and not at all consciously), our Legislature chose to endow, out of this fund, a state university for our common school teachers, under their own control. This second, or lost fund—the present university fund —was granted to our state in answer to an express petition, by joint resolution of our Legislature, in February, 1853, asking that Congress would donate public lands, not less in value than five hundred thousand dollars to each state, 'for the liberal endowment of a system of industrial universities, one in each state of the Union.' (I quote from the petition itself.) Such was the object sought; and such was the only intention of the grant, except that it was thought that some of the older and richer states, like New York, which had one or two agricultural colleges, might desire to found more than one. But nobody, who knew anything about it, supposed that this grant itself would fully and properly endow even one. "Now, is there a man on the continent who does not know that if either of these Congresses had been asked for grants to enlarge and complete the endowments of mere denominational colleges, outside of state control, or that if we had gone to Congress with this scheme of these presidents, all hatched aut and pinfeathered and flying ablaze as it is, not one single solitary vote for such a grant could have been obtained on either plan ? Nay, no single representative would have hazarded his good name by even proposing such a bill. What, worse than idle mockery it is, to pretend that any such scheme is an honest, and due ,and proper use of the fund, now it is obtained. Is the great state of Illinois reduced to the shameful necessity of obtaining funds on false pretexts? 'We need no further proof of the utter incapacity of these gentlemen to manage these funds than their own published reports give us. They evidently have no just conception of what the fund is really for, nor of the primal uses to which it should be put. For this they are not blameworthy, for it lies wholly out of the line of their experience and action. But if they can't eat the hay themselves, they should quietly let the ox eat it. If the state listens to their advice now, a few years hence it will have no state university, as it would have had no normal university