be materially lightened, her treasury shall yet have something for those great public charities, in behalf of the deaf and dumb, the blind and the in sane, which it will be her enlightened policy, at the proper time, to establish and foster."

Initiatory steps were taken by the last Legislature for a thorough organization of the Department of Public Instruction. Recognizing the intimate relation between an efficient primary school and an ultimately great and successful University, the Legislature entrusted the whole general supervision of the educational affairs of the State to the Chancellor of the University of Minnesota.

From the Report submitted to you it will be seen that immediately after the passage of the act creating that officer State Superintendant of Public Instruction-he entered upon the duties of that office. Owing to the incompleteness of existing school laws, while every effort has been made by the Superintendent, the local officers have failed to render the reports so necessary to learn the workings of the Common School system.

The increasing correspondence of the department will render necessary an appropriation for a clerk for the ensuing year; compensation ought also to be made for the services of the Superintendent for the last year, and suitable provision should be had for the same in future.

The recommendation of the Report in relation to a revision of the school code, text-books and other subjects, should engage your earliest attention, so that, if possible, the new code, if one be determined upon, may be ready for distribution by the adjournment of the Legislature.

The Normal School established at Winona, from the Report, appears to have more than met the sanguine expectations of its friends. An enlightened public policy dictates that an institution whose fobject is to train men and women for the noble avocation of teachers in the public schools of the State, should receive the fostering care of the Commonwealth.

The last Legislature created a State University to succeed the TerFitorial institution of learning, which had been in existence for several years previous to the admission of Minnesota into the Union. The Regents have been surrounded with difficulties growing out of the pecuniary embarrassments of the Territorial Institution, and the confused and irregular mode in which its accounts have been kept. A full statement of the affairs of the old institution is made the subject of the first annual Report of the Regents of the State University.

The history of railroad enterprise in Minnesota is too recent, too brief, and too well remembered to demand recapitulation in detail. The lesson taught thereby is easy to comprehend, and has been no doubt well learned.

It is now confessed by all that the State prematurely entered upon the railroad enterprises of 1857. Had its action been confined to the disposal of the Congressional Land Grant, it had been well; but the conditional loan of State credit, superadded to the gift of lands, and the futile results of a scheme from which so much was promised, have satisfied the most enthusiastic of the imprudence at all times of loaning the credit of a State to private corporations, and the special folly of attempting by such means to accomplish enterprises in advance of the necessities and requirements of a community's material interests.

The terms upon which the loan was conceded not having been fulfilled by either of the railroad companies receiving it, default followed, and it became within the power of the State, by enforcing the forfeiture, to again resume control of her land grant. The Act of March 6th, 1859, required of the Governer to foreclose or cause to be foreclosed, the trust deeds of the defaulting companies and authorized him in his discretion, at the sale on such foreclosure, to bid off and purchase the property, rights and franchises covered by the trust deeds, for and in the name of the State, and to make or cause to be made the necessary conveyances to the State. Pursuant to this Act the trust deeds of the several companies have been foreclosed in accordance with the terms of the respective instruments. This was done at my request by the Trustees of the Minneapolis and Cedar Valley Company, and by my own action in the other cases, on the neglect and refusal of the Trustees to proceed. The forfeited lands, rights, franchises and other property of all of these companies were purchased at the foreclosure sales in the name and on behalf of the State of Minnesota, for the sum of one thousand dollars in each case, for the payment of which an appropriation will become necessary.

Prior to the sale of the property and franchises of the Transit, and Minnesota & Pacific Companies, temporary injunctions were served upon me, proceeding from the District Court of the Second Judicial District, in and for the County of Ramsey, enjoining me from proceeding further with the sales then just about to take place. Knowing that injunctions of that nature are granted ex parte, and as of course, my conviction that the chief executive officer of the State, in the exercise of his official duties, is independent of the other co-ordinate branches of the Government, did not impair my confidence in the integrity and sound judicial wisdom of the Court from which the mandate issued, although that conviction led me to disobey it. I should not, however, have deemed it advisable to proceed with the sales, had it not been my opinion, confirmed by the advice of the Attorney General, that the grounds on which a perpetual injunction was asked, were untenable, and that the sales could never be successfully attacked and set aside; and further, that it was particularly desirable for the State to re-take her grant before the present sessi n.

Such is a history of Executive action in this regard since the adjourn. ment of the last Legislature. By this action, as was contemplated, the State has again become possessed of her munificent Congressional grant, and the franchises of the late companies have reverted. In short, we are in the same condition as to Railroad lands and Railroads, as on the day when the Legislature of 1857 assembled ine xtra session, except that we have about two hundred and forty miles of graded road bed, and something over two and a quarter million dollars of conditional State obligations outstanding, as a perpetual warning of the folly of attempting to legislate Railroads into existence, before the demands of trade and transportation of abundant surplus products, of themselves offer temptations to capitalists to undertake their construction.

The extent and value of the existing agricultural surplus, and the certainty of its constant and rapid enlargement, the growth of population, and the continually increasing value of the railroad lands, seemed to justify the expectation that propositions would be laid before you by indi. viduals or companies of capital and experience, who would undertake the completion of some portion at least of our railroads. But in the present;

discomposed state of the public mind, it may happen that no parties will come before you, ready to furnish that security for the performance of their agreements, which, I trust, in any future disposition of whatever portion of our railroad property, the State will insist upon receiving.

Yet it is desirable, at least-and, perhaps, for the reason just assigned this is all that is now possible,-that you place upon the Statute book some law general in its terms, yet well guarded as to the provisions for security of the State, by compliance with which capitalists may, if they desire, at any time become entitled to the lands and other railroad property of the State along the line or lines which they shall propose, with a deposite of pledges, to build, without either the expense of convening an extra session, or the delay of waiting the next regular session.

In any legislation regarding the transfer of our railroad lands, I desire, your attention to be directed to the claims of certain settlers thereon prior to their location by the late companies, whose rights have reverted to the State from their inability to pay for their claims at the recent land sales. The enforcement of our strictly legal rights in the premises, will work great hardship to a worthy and industrious class of citizens, and sully the honor of the State by an act of flagrant injustice. You should therefore extend to them every protection compatible with the interests of the State.

An amendment to the Constitution ratified at the last election, in effect requires that any law levying taxes for the payment of the Railroad Bonds of the State, must be submitted to a vote of the people. There are numerous reasons why an early settlement of the question relating to these

Bonds is desirable. Certainly, equity neither seems to require, nor have we in any event the ability, now to assume the burden of paying them at a par value.

It is still my opinion that the question relating to them may perhaps be best settled in connection with the railroad question. At least, we can better afford to pay them after we receive the consideration and equiv. alent originally proposed, than before. While therefore, you would thereby make the bonds in some degree subserve the building of roads, you would again find the completed roads and the enhanced valuation that ever follows therefrom, aiding and subserving the payment of the bonds. This mutual assistance you should secure, by requiring of any company receiving State lands, or general bonds in lieu of special railroad bonds surrendered, to pay into the State Treasury five per cent. of the gross earnings of their road.

In this connection, the importance of a railroad coinmunication between the navigable waters of the Mississippi and the head of Lake Superior, There is an evident turning of attention induces me again to recur to it. thither on the part of capitalists, and so far as favorable legislation without pecuniary involvement on the part of the State, can assist, the work should be aided.

The great capacity of the State for the production of the cereals, and its remote inland position, require the creation and improvement of every means of exit. The easy and comparatively cheap transportation which the northern lakes afford to the immense crops soon to be the product Unless all of our soil and industry, it is wise to endeavor to secure. avenues are opened to our trade, it is not difficult to see that occasionally a glut must occur which will reduce the market prices of grain to a ruinous figure. Suppose that in three years the wheat surplus of Northern Minnesota should amount to three million bushels, would it not be better for the farmer of the Southern counties that this grain should find an outlet by way of the great lakes directly to New York, than that it should come in competition with his grain in the markets of Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis?

The importance of this lake connection and the continuous navigation thence to the Eastern sea coast is greatly increased in the minds of thinking men, by the national events now transpiring.

Should the precipitate madness of sectional excitement lead to any attempt to deny to the North-western States the free navigation of the Mississippi to its mouth, and the strife be long which should retake that right, these lakes would become our only means of water transport to the ocean. While, as some suggest, the State might donate the swamp lands along the line of a road to that connection, in consideration of the uncer

tainty and delay in relation to any other land grant for such construction, I would be far from advising it, if it might become a precedent which should divert the remainder of these lands from other and more legitimate purposes.

By the munificence of the Federal Congress, the following grants of public lands and other property have been made to this State in trust for special purposes :

1. Sections 16 and 36 of every Township of the public lands, for the support of Common Schools.

2. Seventy-two sections of land for the support of a University.

3. Ten sections of land for the completion or erection of public buildings at the seat of Government.

4. Twelve salt springs with six sections of land adjacent to each, or seventy-two sections in all, for the general use of the State.

5. Five per centum of the proceeds of all the public lands lying within the State, which shall be sold by Congress after the admission of the State into the Union, for the purpose of internal improvements.

6. By the act of Congress, of March 3, 1857, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of certain lines of Railroad therein described-every alternate or odd numbered section within six miles on each side of said Railroad lines, amounting in all to about 4,399,141 acres.

7. By an act of Congress of March 12, 1860, all the swamp or overflowed lands within the State are conferred upon the State, for the purpose of reclaiming and draining the same.

The following is a summary of these grants of lands:

Subtracting from this total the Railroad lands which must pass in the ordinary course to the management of private corporations, we have, then, at the disposal of the Legislature for the promotion of Education, internal improvements, and eleemosynary purposes, nearly eight millions of acres of public lands—more than one-seventh of the whole area of the State,an imperium in imperio equal, in its aggregate extent, to the kingdoms of Holland or Belgium, while it exceeds the combined area of the States of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Of this magnificent grant, the great gift of the nation to all the millions who are to inhabit the soil of Minnesota, you are stewards in their behalf, and it devolves upon you to see that the sacred trusts involved are faithfully executed.