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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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492 History University of Illinois DOCUMENT NUMBER 19 Jacksonville Journal, March 16 and 18, 1867 REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LOCATION OP INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY The undersigned, as chairman of the committee appointed by the farmers and mechanics at the state fair in Decatur and reappointed at the State Convention, called at Bloomington in December, 1865, to secure the passage of a charter for the State Industrial University according to the instruction of said convention, would report upon their action and the causes of their failure to secure the passage of the charter proposed. The friends of education, as well as the people of Illinois generally, had a right to expect and to demand that the foundation of an institution, originating from their munificent grant of public lands, and designed to become the heritage and blessing of posterity to remotest generations, should be laid in simple and solemn honesty and integrity of purpose, uninfluenced by either local or political combinations and corruptions. To secure this result, before the opening of the session of 1865, the members of the committee assembled at the agricultural society rooms at Springfield, together with such officers of that society as were then present, unanimously agreed upon the outlines of a charter for the organization and endowment of the institution, embracing among other provisions, the following cardinal principles: I. That the funds should be kept entire, and only one institution founded in the best locality the state could proffer, wherever that might prove to be. II. That free competition should be offered to all the counties in the state, and the best proposals honestly accepted by a commission appointed by the legislature or otherwise for the purpose. These propositions were so self-evidently just and fair, that they have everywhere received the unanimous approval and endorsement of all the industrial and educational societies and
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