Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 544]

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Report of a Committee on Location of the University 503 in locating the institution for the past two years with all its loss of funds, and of adding millstones of additional taxation upon the people of the state, involved in the intrigues during the session, thus they would lay the very foundations of this state university, in the identical political and social crimes and infamies, it was primarily designed to utterly exterminate from their national history and mind and heart. To this hour no solitary man, woman or child in the state, even pretends that the charter unanimously approved by the board of the State Agricultural Society is not strictly just and fair, or that it would not have become a law two years ago, had it not been for this ring. We might as well attempt to build another St Peter's Church in the vaults of a stercorary as to attempt to realize the idea of a University worthy of the great state of Illinois, amid surroundings and among influences such as these; all the money in Christendom could not achieve it. No parent from abroad would trust his son there, unless he wished him to take lessons in the arts of perfidy, impudence, hypocrisy and drunkenness. All parties that have had anything to do with it, will find themselves cheated in the end. It will dwindle down to a mere boys' school for these Champaign villagers, and will be of no real use to them, not even to use enough to enable them to make sale of their town lots, which is all the ring ever care for it; much less will it ever reimburse the county for the hard earned money this ring has fished out of it. The other funds will probably be squandered in like manner. But this would be of little consequence perhaps, were it not that by disgracing and caricaturing the whole scheme, it will throw the great cause of industrial University Education back in the state for a whole generation— and all this is no fault of the place—Champaign, as a place is well enough; until these disclosures no man was opposed to Champaign as a place, but after what has happened, the place can hardly be divested of its associates and surroundings. The only apparent remedy now is for the people of the state to rally once more and elect legislators who are neither knaves l l | fools, and at the next session remove the institution to B1OOBJ^V*; ington, or some other place where it can be rescued from | | «