Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 545]

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History University of Illinois

odium and contempt that will forever rest upon it, so long as it remains in the hands of this ring of Champaign speculators. This, they have, under the circumstances a perfect legal and moral right to do. Indeed it would be shamefully wrong not to do i t The people of the state can perhaps afford to be taxed by the machinations of the Champaign ring to the tune of some ten or twenty millions, to build palatial state houses at Springfield, to pay a corps of men five dollars per day, and twelve thousand dollars per annum to look on and see it done; they can perhaps afford to build penitentiaries at Cairo, at the most sickly point in the state, where there are no stone, and where the whole ground has to be elevated some fifteen or twenty feet before the work is begun, to keep the yards and grounds above water, and where no fresh vegetables can be supplied to the prisoners from around the inundated grounds in all time to come. They can afford perhaps to dig canals from the lakes to the river, or from the Atlantic to the Pacific, if need be. But they cannot afford to allow such corrupt rings to be formed at the Capital, to vote any amount of money they please out of their pockets from year to year in known defiance of the entire spirit, if not of the express letter of the constitution of the state, without some just and signal rebuke to the plotters and abetters of all such schemes. Nor can they afford to see the noble endowments of the republic, designed at once to be the heritage and glory of unborn generations, made the mere football of the knaves and sharpers, who please to conspire at the capital, to impose such burdens and such outrages upon a betrayed and insulted people. But we do not, after all, in the least despair of the great and good cause of popular Industrial Education. These western states must, and will learn to organize and control institutions so indispensable to their prolonged republican existence and life and power. It may take a long and sad apprenticeship and experience. It may take till we are all in our graves. But it will come at last, borne onward by the triumphant rejoicings of our children's children, amid the hallelujahs of a continent enfranchised w i t h i n full blessings of light and liberty forevermore. Respectfully submitted to the people of Illinois. March I '67. J. B. TURNER, Chairman of the Committee