national sisterhood, would not be similarly, if not equally, subserved by pre-eminent intellectual culture of her leading citizens, as well as by limited common school education of the masses of the people! What peculiar mental measurement of police sufficiency! What strange adjustment, limiting public education to such admeasurements as mere police or military subserviency! Certainly Dr. Elliott's assumption would better apply to despotic countries where education is compulsory and largely military in its methods, because deemed necessary for the protection of the government, or to promote its martial power and spirit of aggrandizement. It does not suit American ideas and conditions, or the American policy as to educational requirements. Every State should establish and foster its own State University. Such institutions may not exert so general benefits as the free schools, but they radiate a far brighter intelligence, scintillating their effects from the highest sources of knowledge, with a loftier and fuller glow, and an intenser heat of intellectual effulgence. They may not be so generally useful as the common schools; but still are as highly necessary for the public good, involving as they do the higher instruction requisite for rounding and perfecting the ordinary education of the people.

Further along in his book on "Federal and State Aid to Higher Education," Mr. Blackmar says: "It has been held by some individuals, and at times by some Legislatures, that the administration of education by the State is a great extravagance, and a plea of economy and for low taxes is always used to defeat appropriations. To this class of arguments the Hon. Andrew D. White answers as follows:

"Talk of economy! Go to your State Legislatures— what strange ethics in dealing with the public institutions! If asked for money to found an asylum for idiots and lunatics or the blind or the deaf and dumb, you will find Legislatures ready to build palaces for them. Millions of dollars are lavished upon your idiots and deaf and dumb and blind and lunatics. Right glad I am it is so; but when you come to ask aid even in measured amounts for the development of

the young men of the State, upon whom is to rest its civilization and from whom is to flow out its prosperity for ages to come, the future makers of your laws and institutions, how are they to be left to the most meagre provision during all their preparation?"

EDUCATION OF COLORED CHILDREN.

As to the question of the education of the colored race, Governor Ross recently prepared and published an exhibit of what Texas, under democratic rule, has done and is now doing for the education and betterment of the colored race, in which he presents the following statement:

"The democrats have been in power in Texas about fourteen years, but the present school system has been in operation only about ten years. During the last ten years the democrats of Texas have paid to support public schools for the colored children as follows:

In ten years, he adds, the colored scholastic population increased 134 per cent and the white 113 per cent. Owing to over estimates of the available school fund in 1885 and 1886, there were deficiencies which had to be met out of the school revenues of the years 1888 and 1889, reducing the pro rata, by which reduction the white and colored children suffered equally."

In the same connection, it may be added, that the constitution of 1866, (section 7), while declaring that "the Legislature may provide for the levying of a tax for educational purposes," also provided that all the sums arising from said tax which may be collected.

from Africans, or persons of African descent, shall be exclusively appropriated for the maintenance of a systern of public schools for Africans and their children; and it shall be the duty of the Legislature to encourage schools among these people.'

Such special provision was, however, dropped from the constitution of 1876, thus allowing for the education of colored children the benefits of a pro rata of the State's entire school fund, instead of the limited amount collected by taxation from colored people.

The question of higher as well as ordinary education of the colored race is one which demands attention of the University regents, as well as of the legislature, under the requirements of the law providing for a colored branch university. If it is intended to put it at once into operation the regents should be provided with seperate funds in addition to those of the university fund. As has been suggested it might be better to give the colored people a separate university. Either this, or if it is not practicable under the constitution, let the scope of the Prairie View colored school at Hempstead be raised for the present to as high standard as practicable for their more advanced education, or such as may be advisable in the line of university education. It has also been suggested that some arrangement might be advantageously effected by the State to incorporate the Tillotson Institute, as a university for the colored people, or as a branch of the State University required to be located for them at Austin. If there is a constitutional inhibition in the way of solving this matter so that the State, if desired, can give the colored people an independent university, instead of a branch institution, then the constitution would seem to be out of joint with the changed relations of the people of

both races.

CHAPTER III.

ESTABLISHING THE UNIVERSITY.

COLLEGES OR UNIVERSITIES."

At the same session of the third congress of Texas, which provided for locating the Capitol and the University, there was passed "an act appropriating certain lands for the establishment of a general system of education," approved January 26, 1839, in which the president was required to have surveyed fifty leagues of land, to be set apart for the establishment and endowment of two colleges or universities."

It is strange, that following this, no mention is made of this land, or the question of a university or universities in the constitution of 1845. Subsequently, however, in pursuance of law, the lands were located and surveyed in the counties of Cooke, Fannin, Grayson, Hunt, Collin, Lamar, McLennan, Hill, Callahan and Shackleford, and have, most of them, been sold under laws for that purpose. About thirteen thousand acres of the McLennan lands, and some eight thousand acres in Grayson county, remained in litigation, and provision was made by law to quiet tittle to them, (acts of 1879 and 1881). By special acts of January 4, 1862, December 16, 1863, and October 20, 1866, time for paying interest on the lands in litigation was extended. The lands in McLennan county, alleged to have been located in conflict with a Spanish grant to Joachin Morena, and on which interest had consequently been suspended, had mostly been sold under an act of 1874, and by act of March 6, 1875, it was further provided that settlers upon the Hill and McLennan lands should not be compelled to pay the amounts due upon said lands until the suit pending in behalf of the Moreno grant shall have been decided and the title to the land settled. A favorable compromise of the Moreno controvesy has recently been effected through the efforts of Gov. Ross with Gen. Mexia, of Mexico, by which the

title to about 6,000 acres of the McLennan lands has been confirmed to the State, and the present Land Commissioner, Capt. Hall, at once placed on sale for the University such lands as had not been sold, which, unfortunately for the University, as they are now so much more valuable, were only a few hundred acres. The compromise was virtually about one-half for the other and is very favorably regarded by Judge Clark, of Waco, who was the attorney in the case, as the title was so old and clouded any recovery whatever was doubtful and the State was not likely to substitute other lands for them to the University. These lands, though now so much more valuable, were mostly claimed from the State at $1.50 per acre, the State's original price for all "school and University lands," and with indulgence from paying up the interest till the suit as to the title from the State was settled.

There are persons familiar with the matter who do not consider the compromise as advantageous to the University as might be supposed, though quite advantageous to the State, since the latter has the benefit of the lands to make good titles she assumed to confer in selling them for actual settlement, while the University, as most of them had been sold by the State, has to accept the State's old price for them $1.50 per acre under the act of 1874 under which the sales were made. The McLennan lands (about 6,000 acres) embraced some that had been sold and patented, and a few hundred acres only as stated that had not been sold at all. As to the value of the lands embraced in the fifty leagues which had been given to the University and of which the McLennan lands were a part, Governor Throckmorton stated in his message to the legislature in 1866, that 58,523 acres of the fifty leagues (221,400 acres) which were surveyed in 1856 had been sold at an average price of $3.34 per acre. Prior to the compromise with Gen. Moreno, Land Commissioner Hall held that the act of 1875, extended the time of payments only on purchases actually effected, by partial payments at least, made before 1875, but the purchasers who had no patents claimed that the exemption applied generally so that they were not in default and