Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 62]

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86

History University of Illinois

" And in this rich, and at least prospectively, powerful State, acting in co-operation with the vast energies and resources of this mighty confederation of united republics, even very small beginnings property directed, may at no very remote day result in consequences more wonderful and beneficient than the most daring mind would now venture to predict or even conceive. "In the appropriation of those funds your memorialists would especially desire that a department for normal school teaching, to thoroughly qualify teachers for county and district schools, and an appropriate provision for the practical education of the destitute orphans of the State, should not be forgotten. "We think that the object at which we aim must so readily commend itself to the good sense and patriotism, both of our people, rulers and statesmen, when once fully and clearly understood, that we refrain from all argument in its favor. " W e ask only that one institution for the numerous Industrial Classes, the teachers and orphans of this State, and of each State, should be endowed on the same general principles, and to the same relative extent as some one of the numerous Institutions now existing in each State for the more especial benefit of the comparatively very limited classes in the three learned professions. If this is deemed immoderate or even impracticable we will thankfully accept even less. " A s to the objection that States cannot properly manage literary institutions, all history shows that the States in this country, and in Europe, which have attempted to manage them by proper methods, constituting a vast majority of the whole, have fully succeeded in their aim. While the few around us which have attempted to endow and organize them on wrong principles—condemned by all experience, have of course failed. Nor can a State charter and originate Railroads or manage any other interest, except by proper methods and through proper agents. And a people or a State that cannot learn in time, to manage properly and efficiently all these interests, and especially the great interests of self-education, is obviously unfit for selfgovernment, which we are not willing as yet to admit in reference to any State in the Union, and least of all our own.