Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 609]

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Address to the Citizens of Morgan County

569

An annual report shall be made regarding the progress of each college, recording any improvements and experiments made, with their cost and results, and such other matters, including State industrial and economical statistics, as may be supposed useful; one copy of which shall be transmitted by mail free, by each to all the other colleges which may be endowed under the provisions of this act, and also one copy to the Secretary of the Interior/' The provisions of the above act of Congress are very easily understood. I t gives to the State of Illinois 480,000 acres of the public lands, as a perpetual endowment, not possible to be diminished, forfeited, or perverted by any contingency possible in the future. Unlike most endowments, it cannot be alienated or abused by those holding it in special trust, because the State, in accepting the grant, becomes a general trustee, under bonds to the Government of the United States of the most unquestionable stringency. Indeed, the institution, when once it is established, is as permanent as the State Government itself. No change of State policy—no mutation of public sentiment—no partisan effort can ever, in the slightest degree, divert this noble fund from its particular purpose. I t can never become the instrument of any party, clique, or sect, from its direct connection with, and dependence upon, the executive and legislative branches of the State Government. Being, as it will be, directly answerable to the legislature, its management must always be conformable to the sentiments of the people. No extreme, ultra, or speculative views on the part of those to whom it may be for the time committed, can, for any length of time, put the institution beyond the control of public opinion. When once established it imposes no future burdens upon its friends and patrons. I t becomes a perpetual source of benefit to the State at large, and especially to interests in its vicinity, while it asks no further aid, through all coming time, than the public consideration and interest. Born, as it is to be, out of the God-created wealth of the public domain, it only needs the fostering wisdom of the State to move on in a career of unbroken usefulness—conferring inestimable benefits upon the youth of the State in future generations.