Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1874-03-27
st. JOhn,bury. w., March 81, 1874.
OUR HORTICULTURAL COLLEGE. !,


ed ont of toe national appropriation for an
industrial college.
On the fourth page Of this weeks FARMER
we print speech, delivered before the legis-
lature of lS84-5 by Henry Lane, Of Corn
wall, that is we'll worth the reading by every
one into whose hands it may come. In that
speech is toretold, with almost the exactness
Of inspiration, the condition of things that
now exists, as the result of the. annexation
of the Agricultural College to the Burling-
ton University. Says Mr.. Lane, land we
repeat his words here because of their
prophetic truth)-" Ii the fund created by
the sale of lands granted to the state is dis
posed Of by connecting the college, contem-
plated by that act with Burlington college,
as merely an appendage to that institution,
believe that the agricultural department
will be absorbed by the other departments of
the older college, aud ten years hence hard
ly any one, not connected with the college
will know that there is such an institution in
name or fact as the Vermont Agricultural
College.
On the same page will also be found a
paper by Judge Lynde, of Williamstown, in
which, incidentally, he speaks OF this great
abuse of the agricultural fund with proper
indignation. In the discussion before the
Board of Agriculture which followed Judge
Lynde's paper, and which was participated
in by Hon. f. d. Douglas, Col. j. b. Mead,
Prof Collier aud others, and excited
lively interest among the large number of
intelligent farmers present, the venerable
Judge, (who was fellow member with Mr..
Lane of the Legislature in which the joo by
which this money was allotted to Burlington
college, was successfully carried,) explained
how the thing was effected The farmers in
the legislature were many OF them, misled,
and some perhaps indifferent in regard to this
money, but not by any means all Of them,
as has been asserted. Those who, like Mr..
Lane aud Judge Lynde, were DESTROYS that
we should have an industrial school that
should be something more than name,
urged that the bill Incorporating an agricul-
tural college (which as first passed, provi-
ded for an independent institution,) should
not require larger sum than $4,000 to be
raised by the locality where it was to be es-
tablished But the college lobby, said Judge
Lynde, with the deliberate purpose of pre-
venting the act from going into operation,
got the sum placed at 100000 The mo-
tive for this was we'll understood in the leg
islature, and the final fixing of the sum at
that amount was understood to be, in fact,
the defeat of the effort to establish an indie
pendent college, and the clearing of the way
for the bill passed by the succeeding legisla-
ture comforting the fund, upon the Bur-
lington college.
But this was not the end Of the trickery at
work in this matter. The first act provided
that if at any time the college as incorpora-
ted should fail to comply with the terms Of
the national law, the legislature should
have the power summarily to abolish it and
resume the control Of the fund. In the
second act, by which the fund, was trans
ferred to Burlington, in place of this clause
is substituted another, which makes 1tit
in the Suprente Court necessary, in order to
get this money out of the hands Of its pres
ent posessors, in case they should fail as
above mentioned. If this does not look as
though they intended to do just as they have
done, what does it look like?
And what have they done2 What has
Burlington college done with that fund
For eight years it has been receiving the in
terest of it, amounting now to between sixty
and seventy thousand dollars, and what, for
all this money, their money, have the work
ing men of Vermont received from those
who have had the spending Of Stripped Of
all humbug and special pleading, the plain
fact stands forth that, as Professor Collier
confessed before the meeting addressed by
Judge Lynde, mol one student has the }" Yer
mont Agricultural College eUer had But
what has been done with that money? 1t
has been spent to endOw more completely
the Burlington college for the education Of
the same kind OF students that before com.
posed its classes. With the cunning Of
medieval priestcraft the new proiessorship'
endowed by this fund were made just such
indeed, as a rich agricultural college might
be supposed to require, but they were alsc
just the professorships that Burlington col
lege required to enable it to compete sue
cessfully with other colleges of the SAINT
c,ass,-just such professorships as other vel
endowed colleges of that class already had
Not one Of them was dstinctively an agri
cultural professorship And it is under GOV
er Of a subtsrfuge like this that the Rev
DR., Buckham, president of Burlington col
lege, announces himself ready to 60 befor'
the Supreme Court, THAT Supreme Court to
which the matter was so cunningly relega
ted,) and take oath that " not a dollar o
the fund has been misapplied, or diverted
from its Legitimate and proper purpose
No wonder that one Of the farmers presen
at the meeting where president Buckham
made this declaration thought him fit rep
resentative OF the monks of old, come dow
to modern times. No wonder that anothe
farmer at that meeting said as he took hi
leave" Well, gentlemen, it you have 60
the money, and can hold it, and will nc
give US anything we ask for If you hav
been smarter than we and have outwitted u'
and there ia now no helm for il. we NAV