Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/17

Rh the University of Arizona. The university was to be under a board of seven regents made up of the governor, the judges of the supreme court, and three other members chosen by the legislature. The main support of the institution was to be derived from the lands granted to the territory for that purpose. The university, when organized, was to consist of (1) a department of literature, science, and the arts; (2) a department of natural history, including a history of the Territory; and (3) such other departments to be added as the regents should deem necessary and the university funds allow. The regents were directed to select a site for the university before January 1, 1866. In the meantime, university moneys accruing were to be kept in the hands of the State treasurer.

Under this law nothing was accomplished toward the organization of the proposed university. As McCrea has pertinently said, for the next 10 years the best energies of the people were to be devoted to a desolating Indian war; and the University of Arizona, the dream of this Michigan jurist and of his friend, the governor, was forgotten for a generation in the fierce struggle to hold the land for civilization.

In the matter of common schools it was provided that—

The proceeds of lands granted by Congress for this purpose, appropriations made by the Territory, and the proceeds of gifts, grants, and donations “shall be and remain a perpetual fund, the interest, rents, and proceeds thereof to be inviolably applied to the object of the original grant or gift, and to no other use or purpose whatsoever”; and until such system was established by law all moneys were to accumulate and remain in the Territorial treasury as a distinct fund, to be known as the common-school fund. The remaining phases of the Howell code were supplementary to the above. They provided for the establishment of a Territorial library supported by moneys out of the Territorial treasury and in charge of a Territorial librarian. And in addition to the above it was provided that—