The University.

[From the Jefferson City Tribune, March 16, 1881.]

In the course of this week the 31st General Assembly will have made up its [unclear: record], and it is hoped it may be an honorable and liberal one towards this [unclear: institution] We are chiefly indebted to the United [unclear: States,] that we have in Missouri a State University at all. The enabling act of March 6, 1820, which authorized the [unclear: inhabitant] of the Territory to organize themselves into a State, offered every sixteenth [unclear: section] of the public lands for "common schools," of which there was to be one in [unclear: every] township, and at the same time also a large body of the public lands, which [unclear: amounted] to two townships for "a seminary of learning," "a university for the [unclear: promote] of the arts, sciences and literature." The lower and the higher education of the [unclear: common] school and the University were thus conceived in the same original "[unclear: establing] act," and came to birth with the birth of the State herself. One university many common schools, i.e., concentration for the higher education and diffusion page 9 for the lower. When the foundation of our common schools and State University were thus laid on the same rock, by the acceptance of this valuable property on the part of the territorial convention, in an ordinance irrevocable, "without the consent of the United States," the educational policy of the organized and subsequently admitted State was forever settled. It was right and proper that the States which took active part in the organization of Missouri out of territory, bought with their own money, and in her admission as an associate on equal footing with themselves in the Union, should provide against that new association disgracing and distracting them by her ignorance with its consequent train of crimes, ruffianism and infamy. The kind of education which the people who organized Missouri engaged to maintain and forever encourage as a condition precedent to admission into the Union, and as securing the culture and intelligence necessary to an honorable association therein, was, therefore, not merely that of the common school, but that of the University, a University in the front rank, "a University for the promotion of the arts, sciences and literature." The word promote means to move forward; hence the only kind of a University which answers to this language of the original bond, is one which stands in the front rank and is taking its part in moving forward the educational work of the age. And why should not the youth of Missouri enjoy educational advantages of the first rank?

When the first Constitution of the State of Missouri was adopted, a solemn engagement founded on the antecedent "enabling act," was incorporated into it; and the common schools and the University have been embodied in every Constitution of the State from that one to the present one, nor is it in the power of the people to take either the common school or the University out of the Constitution without the consent of the United States.

The educational policy of Missouri, therefore, as embracing the University with the same tenacity as the common school, is no new thing, no after thought, no post-bellum discovery, nor importation from other sections of the country, but a policy conceived and born with the State itself. The obligation of each General Assembly to support this educational work in the two departments indicated is not an open question, but a matter settled by those who have gone before us, be it said to their honor as the founders of the commonwealth of Missouri. The work of the Normal schools is incidental to the common school and wholly subservient to the raising up of the teachers therefor. That was the legislative purpose of their establishment in Missouri, as it has been of their establishment throughout the land.

Sometimes it becomes very apparent from the course of members on the floor of the General Assembly that they have never given this matter any particular attention, for they assume that the whole educational policy of the State is unsettled and that they are called on to deal with it as an open and original question. At almost every meeting of the Legislature some ignorant buffoon disgraces himself in connection with educational matters; fortunately it can't disgrace the State, whose early record is most honorable, and its study is the best corrective of such brawling and rampant ignorance.

It should then be forever understood, as admitting of neither question nor controversy, that Missouri is truly bound to the maintenance of her University and common schools. The only thing left to the discretion of the General Assembly is the measure of support. But if it is a settled matter, as it undoubtedly is, that we are to have a State University, then doubtless all will agree that it should be so liberally and page 10 generously supported as to be an honor to the State. This is what the people of Missouri expect.