hands of or under the control of the State. This constitutional provision amply provides for the preservation of said fund, and clearly prohibits the perversion of it for other purposes. Under it, the Legislature has no constitutional power to appropriate any portion of this fund to defray the expenses of the State, counties or other municipal bodies, than those created for school purposes; neither can the same end be accomplished by the indirect means of taxation; because, so much as would be taken from the fund by taxation, would be an unconstitutional perversion of the fund to that extent. It follows then, that this property being a part of the public school fund, it cannot be subject to taxation. City of Chicago v. The People, 80-384. To 8. In districts having a population exceeding 100,000 inhabitants, the law vests the title to section 16 in the city, to be held in trust for school purposes. It is not held by the city for general municipal purposes. It is held for educational purposes and it cannot be used for opening or repairing streets. appropriate this property for the use of the public, would be a perversion of the fund, and would, in violation of the statute, impair the principal of the fund. In a proceeding to lay out and open a street over such property, it is proper and right to assess damages for the property so taken. Fagan v. City of Chicago, 84-236. 9. Where a school township is divided, leaving the sixteenth section wholly in one division, such division grants the sixteenth section to that portion of the township, together with the rents, issues and profits derived therefrom, to be administered by the trustees of schools of that township for their own uses and purposes. This fund could not be administered in any other efficient and profitable manner; there would be a clashing of jurisdiction and interests, resulting injuriously to the schools. There is a natural equity, when a township is divided, that the old township should retain all its property, real and personal, unless a different disposition has been made by the terms of the division; and the law is to this effect. People v. Trustees of Schools, 86-613. 10. The provisions of section 2, article 8 of the Constitution, designed to secure the faithful application of school lands, moneys or other property granted or donated to school, college, seminary or university purposes, does not exempt private donations to educational institution from assessment of benefits for local improvements. That provision was, no doubt, intended to secure the public school fund of the State, from whatever sources derived, and not mere private donations to educational institutions, or to private corporations created for educational purposes. University of Chicago v. The People, 118–565. 11. Sections 16 in the several townships were granted by the general government to the State of Illinois, for the benefit of the inhabitants of such townships, for the use of schools. The enabling act of Congress, approved April 18, 1818, granting to the State of Illinois section 16 of the public lands, and the ordinance of the Constitutional convention of Aug. 26, 1818, accepting the propositions of Congress, constituted a solemn compact whereby the State of Illinois became the purchaser of the school sections, for a valuable consideration, with full power to sell or lease the same for the use of schools, as the State might provide and think most beneficial to the inhabitants of the respective townships. Trustees of Schools v. Schroll, 120–509. 12. Sections 16 in the several townships, having been granted and accepted, were not public lands within the act of Congress, approved March 30, 1822, authorizing the State of Illinois to survey and mark through the public lands of the United States, the route of the canal connecting the Illinois river with the southern bend of Lake Michigan, and for like reason, they were not swamp and overflowed lands, made unfit thereby for cultivation. After the grant in 1818, they ceased to be public lands of the United States, nor could they, after that time, be regarded as unsold lands, and were unaffected by the swamp land act of Congress of Sept. 28, 1850. Ibid. 13. The guaranty of the Constitution is that all lands, moneys, or other property, donated, granted or received for school, college, seminary or university purposes, and the proceeds thereof, shall be faithfully applied to the objects for which such gifts or grants were made. The grant of the sixteenth section to the State is for the use of the inhabitants of the townships for the use of schools. It would be difficult to point out anything in either of these provisions preventing the control of schools in one townshig being taken from a board in that township and vested in a board in another township. Cravener v. Board of Education, 133–145. PERMANENT SCHOOL FUNDS. 14. Statement of the permanent school funds, the income alone of which, may be expended for school purposes. School Fund proper, being three per centum of the net proceeds of sales of University Fund, being amount charged to the State by an act of the General College Fund, being one-sixth part of three per centum of the net proceeds of sales of public lands in this State. Seminary Fund, being the proceeds of the sales of the seminary lands donated by the general government for the establishment and maintenance of a State seminary. County Fund, created by the operation of an act approved February 7, 1835, which provided that teachers should not receive from the public fund more than half the amount due them for services rendered the preceding year, and that the surplus should constitute the principal of a new fund to be called The County School Fund'.. Township Fund, includes sixteenth section lands unsold and other lands, and the proceeds derived from the sale of sixteenth section and other lands... Total...... $613,362 96 335,592 32 618,220 53 156,613 32 59,838 72 161,703 31 15,711,591 71 $17,656, 922 87 § 3. Neither the General Assembly nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money, or other personal property ever be made by the State or any such public corporation, to any church, or for any sectarian purpose 1. A constitutional mandate can not be circumvented by indirect methods. Under our form of government, church and State are not and never cán be united. The former must pursue its mission without the aid of the latter. County of Cook v. Industrial School for Girls, 125-540. 2. By section 1, article 8 of the Constitution, it is made the duty of the State to provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools. If statutes are passed under which the management of these schools shall get into the bands of sectarian institutions, then under the theory that they relieve the State of a burden, which it would otherwise be itself required to bear, the prohibition of the Constitution will be powerless to prevent the money of the tax-payers from being used to support such institutions inasmuch as they will render a service to the State by performing for it its duty of educating the children of the people. Ibid. 3. It is an untenable position, that public funds may be paid out to help support sectarian schools, provided only such schools shall render a quid pro quo for the payments made to them. The Constitution declares against the use of public funds to aid sectarian schools independently of the question whether there is or is not a consideration furnished in return for the funds so used. Ibid. 4. The free schools are institutions provided where all children of the State may receive a good common school education. The schools have not been established to aid any sectarian denomination, or assist in disseminating any sectarian doctrine, and no board of education or school directors have any authority to use the public funds for such a purpose. Millard v. Board of Education, 121-297. 5. The paying of rent to a church organization for the use of a room for school purposes is not such an appropriation, or aid to the church, as comes within the prohibition of our Constitution. Religious organizations are not under such legal bans that they may not deal at arm's length with the public in selling or leasing their property, when required for public use, in good faith, receiving therefor but a fair and reasonable compensation. The public in such case receives the full benefit of its contract, and the funds paid are not a gift, appropriation or aid to the church, nor paid for any sectarian purpose. Millard v. Board of Education, 19A-48; Millard v. Board of Education, 121-297. § 4. No teacher, State, county, township, or district school officer shall be interested in the sale, proceeds or profits of any book, apparatus or furniture used, or to be used, in any school in this State, with which such officer or teacher may be connected, under such penalties as may be provided by the General Assembly. § 5. There may be a county superintendent of schools in each county, whose qualifications, powers, duties, compensation and time and manner of election, and term of office, shall be prescribed by law. 1. Section 5, article 8 of the Constitution provides that there may be a county superintendent of schools in each county, whose qualifications, powers, duties, compensation, and time and manner of election, and term of office shall be prescribed by law. This provision vests the power offixing the compensation of county superintendents of schools in the Legis[ature. Such superintendents do not belong to that class of county officers whose compensation is to be fixed by the county board, as provided in section 10, article 10 of the Constitution. Jimison v. Adams County, 130-558. 2. County superintendents elected hereafter shall receive in full for all services rendered by them, in counties of the first class, $1,250.00 per annum; in counties of the second class, $1,650.00 per annum; in counties of the third class $7,500.00 per annum, payable quarterly from the State school fund: Provided, however, that the board of supervisors or board of county commissioners may allow additional compensation for such services, payable quarterly from the county treasury. Sec. 27 Fees and Salaries Act. ARTICLE IV. * Grant SECTION 22. The General Assembly shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is to say: Providing for the management of common schools. ing to any corporation, association or individual any special or exclusive privilege, immunity or franchise whatever. * * In all other cases where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted. 1. Section 22, article 4, of the Constitution, prohibits the General Assembly from passing any local or special law providing for the management of common schools. It must be noticed that the lauguage of this clause is much less comprehensive than that of section 1, article 8. There a system of free schools, not merely the management of free schools, is required to be provided; and had it been intended no local or special law should be enacted for that purpose, it is most natural and probable that it would have been so said. It must be assumed that the word management was not unadvisedly or accidentally used, and that it relates to the conduct of the school in imparting instruction. Speight v. The People, 87-595. 2. There is no limitation in the Constitution as to the agencies the State shall adopt in providing a system of free schools, and the General Assembly has full power to select or prescribe the agencies by which school taxes shall be levied, collected, held and disbursed, and all laws, whether in city charters or elsewhere, designed to affect free schools, may be regarded as school laws intended to provide a system of free schools. Section 22, article 4, of the Constitution, as to the power of passing special laws, relates merely to the management of common schools, that is, to the conduct of common schools in imparting instruction, and does not relate to the matter of providing the necessary funds for their support. Fuller v. Heath, 89-296. 3. The provisions of the general school law which affect the method of constituting the board of education and change the limit of taxation for school purposes prescribed in special charters, are not in violation of section 22, article 4, of the Constitution, prohibiting the passage of special laws changing the charter of any city or village. Cleveland. Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company v. Randle, 183-364. 4. The act approved May 29, 1879, does not violate that clause of section 22, article 4, of the Constitution, which prohibits the General Assembly from passing any local or special law incorporating cities, towns or villages, or changing or amending the charter of any city, town or village. This act applies to all cities in the State having such school laws, and prescribes for them the same methods of constituting the board of education, and of the same limit of taxation as is prescribed for other cities which levy school taxes under the general law. This act tends to uniformity rather than to perpetuate differences. An act which should repeal all such special laws would not be a local or special law and obnoxious to this provision of the Constitution, and so, one repealing all special limitations, leaving all other provisions of such special acts in force, is, upon the same principle, not prohibited. Statutes have been passed changing limitations upon the rate of taxation for other purposes as fixed in special charters of cities so incorporated, so as to produce greater uniformity, but their constitutionality has not been seriously questioned. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company v. Randle, 183-364. ARTICLE V. SECTION 25. All civil officers, except members of the General Assembly and such inferior officers as may be by law exempted, shall, before they enter on the duties of their respective offices, take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation: I do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of according to the best of my ability. ..... And no other oath, declaration or test shall be required as a qualification. 1. The constitution requires that all civil officers, with exceptions that do not include trustees of schools, shall take and subscribe an oath before entering upon the duties of their respective offices. Such official oath is an essential and necessary qualification for holding the office, and without it, the title to the office fails. Simons v. The People, 18A-588. ARTICLE IX. * * * SECTION 3. The property of the State, counties, and other municipal corporations, both real and personal, and such other property as may be used exclusively for * school * * purposes, may be exempted from taxation; but such exemption shall be only by general law. 1. Section 2 of the revenue law provides that all lands donated by the United States for school purposes, not sold or leased; all public school houses; all property of institutions of learning, including the real estate on which the institutions are located, not leased by such institutions or otherwise used with a view to profit; and all property of every kind belonging to the State of Illinois, shall be exempt from taxation. 2. In order to exempt a building erected for a school house from taxation, it must be under the immediate control of the school directors. It should be held in such a manner that it can be used at all times for the benefit of the public schools, independent of the will or action of other persons. It should be held in fee, or by such other estate as would give the board of directors the right to possess or control it at all times for the use of the district. The fact that it may have been once used for the purposes of a public school, does not of itself give it the character of a public school house after it ceases to be so used. Pace v. County Commissioners, 20-644. 3. Land held by the trustees of the University of Illinois, although conveyed to the corporate body, belongs to and is under the entire control of the State, when disposed to exercise the power; and, being property of the State, the Constitution authorizes its exemption from taxation, and the Legislature has exempted it. Trustees v. Champaign County, 76-184. 4. A fund was donated to the State, in the first place, for the establishment and maintenance of an institution of learning, which this land represents. The State has no intention to part with either the ownership of the property or control of the institution. The Legislature has created a body corporate, as the most convenient mode of controlling the institution, its property and affairs, but the State retains the power of selecting its trustees, and, has powers, through other than trustees, to sell and dispose of the property of the institution, or even repeal its charter, as public policy or the interest of the university may require. Ibid. 5. This section will hardly bear the construction, that the public school property alone is embraced in its provisions, but it was intended to embrace private schools, or schools under private charters, as well as the public school fund; but be that as it may, it does embrace property of the State, and the public school property and funds do, in fact, though not in form, belong to the State. City of Chicago v. The People, 80-384. 6. Lands held by an institution of learning created by a special charter granted by the Legislature, not leased nor otherwise used with a view to profit, but used strictly in carrying on a seminary of learning, and used exclusively for that purpose, are exempt from taxation under the statute of exemption relating to property of institutions of learning. Monticello Female Seminary v. The People, 106-398. 7. Real estate belonging to institutions of learning that shall be exempt from taxation is limited by the express terms of the statute to that upon whidh the institutions are located, and it is not within the province of the courts, by construction, to declare that other property shall be exempt. The General Assembly could rightfully exempt only such property as may be used exclusively for the purposes of the institutions of learning. It is not to be understood that the act of the General Assembly on this subject is broader in its scope than the Constitution itself. Theological Seminary v. The People, 101-578. 8. It has been uniformly held, that where the law, in exempting property from taxation, specifies both the ownership and use to which it is put, as descriptive of the property, unless the ownership and use of the property |