Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 614]

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History University of Illinois

tions, put in no claim for this, the most important of them aUt We hope that in reply to this question there will be but a single answer: "Morgan County is, under every aspect of the case, the very best location that could be selected, and the citizens of the county will stand first in their offers to secure it!" This reply, we respectfully claim, is the only one which the county can consistently make. Within the past twenty years over two millions of dollars have been brought from the State treasury and expended mainly within the county. The County in its corporate capacity has never been called on for a dollar beyond its share of a burden in common with other counties of the State. It has enjoyed all the advantages of being, for twenty years, the location of the most desirable of all the State interests. Here the State has expended more of its public money than at any other point. Is not this a time when the citizens of the county should hold to the State language like this: "We acknowledge the other institutions to have been of the nature of a gift from the State to the county; this, on the contrary, we expect to obtain by honorable purchase—we are thankful for the benefactions of the State, conferred at a time when the county would have been illy able to make a return; now we wish, under a change of circumstances, to show that Morgan County is worthy the favors for many years received by her, rivalling any of her sister counties in the amount of her tender for the proposed institution." The friends of this measure, after ascertaining so far as practicable what exertion other counties are making to secure the location of the proposed institution, and after conference with those who are best informed as to the spirit of the Legislature, believe that the sum of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) will be necessary to have the county present herself as a claimant for its location, with any fair prospect of success. Should public |||timent continue to encourage them they also intend to in: ^ p s e this sum to one-third or one-half as much more from those ?^Wjf B f o r | i | enterprise will induce them to exceed their j | f c o r t i O T i H the^eommon burden. The first named sum they ^|peve should b e ^ s e d by county tax, in such annual installments as further examination of the sense of the county may de-