Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 439]

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808

History University of Illinois

seminaries of learning under the influence of party passion, through legislative control. And it is surely a matter of devout gratitude that our legislators have had wisdom enough to see and feel this difficulty, and that they have been led, from various causes, to hold this fund free from all commitment to the present hour, when the people begin to be convinced that they need it, and can safely control it; and no legislator but an aristocrat or a demagogue would desire to see it in other hands. The same difficulty occurs as regards sects.—Let the institution be managed ever so well by any one party or sect, it is still certain their opponents will stand aloof from it, if not oppose and malign it for that very! reason. Hence, all will see at once, that the greatest possible care should be taken to free it from, not only the reality, but even from the suspicion of any such influence.—Should the party in power, when the charter may be granted, appoint a majority of the board of trustees from the parties in the minority, it would show a proper spirit, and be in all coming time, an example of true magnanimity, which their opponents could not fail to respect and to imitate, and which the people at large would highly approve. A victorious hero can afford to be generous as well as brave—none worthy of a triumph can afford to be otherwise. In all future appointments, also, the candidates should be elected with such an evident regard to merit, and disregard of all political and sectarian relations, as to ever carry the conviction that the equal good of the whole alone is sought. There can be no great difficulty in accomplishing all this, if it is well known in the outset that the people will keep their eye closely upon that man, whoever he may be, who by any bargaining for votes, or any direct or indirect local, sinister, or selfish action or influence, or any evasion or postponement, or by any desire to tamper and amend, merely to show himself off to advantage, shall in any way embarass or endanger this greatest of all interests ever committed to a free state—the interest of properly and worthily educating all the sons of her soil. Let the people set on such a man, if the miscreant wretch lives, for all future time, a mark as much blacker than the mark set on Cain, as midnight is darker than noon-day. This is a question, above all others,