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6 CORNELL UNIVERSITY REGISTER
and appropriating to it the income of New York's share of the land-
grant fund. The founder's broad conception of a university was
reconciled with the narrower purpose of the Act of Congress by means
of a provision in the charter that, besides such branches of learning
as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, "such other
branches of science and knowledge may be embraced in the plan of
instruction and investigation pertaining to the university as the
proper."
trustees may deem useful and In the same liberal spirit it
was provided in regard to the board of trustees that "at no time shall
;"
a majority of the board be of one religious sect or of no religious sect
in regard to professors and other officers, that "persons of every reli
gious denomination or of no religious denomination shall be equally
appointme
eligible to all offices and
and in regard to students,
that the University should admit them "at the lowest rates of ex
pense consistent with its welfare and
ly
efficiency,"
and more particular
that it should "receive students to the number of one each year
from each assembly district in this State. . .free of any tuition
fee. . .in consideration of their superior ability and as a reward for
superior scholarship in the academies and public schools of this
State."
Ezra Cornell's direct gifts to the University were five hundred
thousand dollars, two hundred acres of land with useful buildings,
and several smaller gifts for special purposes. His largest benefac
tion came in the form of profits eventually made by the University
on land scrip that he purchased from the State. The State Comp
troller had sold no more than 76,000 acres in the autumn of 1865,
when Mr. Cornell bought 100,000 acres for $50,000 on condition that
all the profits accruing from the sale of the land should be paid to
Cornell University. That purchase was but the beginning of Mr.
Cornell's great operation in land for the University's benefit. In
April of 1866 the Legislature passed "an act to authorize and facilitate
the early disposition by the Comptroller of the lands or land scrip
States."
the United The Comptroller was
donated to this State by
authorized to sell scrip at not less than 30 cents an acre to the trustees
of Cornell University, or, if they did not purchase, to anybody who
would give proper security that the whole net profits from the sale of
the lands would be paid to Cornell University. The trustees were not
able to make the purchase. Mr. Cornell agreed to take the scrip at
30 cents an acre, or 60 cents an acre, the market value, if he realized
so much as that in the sale of the land. He made the following stip
ulation in a letter to the Comptroller: "I shall most cheerfully accept
your views so far as to consent to place the entire profits to be derived
from the sale of the lands to be located with the college land scrip in
the treasury of the State, if the State will receive the money as a
separate fund from that which may be derived from the sale of the
scrip, and will keep it permanently invested, and appropriate the
proceeds from the income thereof annually to the Cornell University,
subject to the direction of the trustees thereof for the general purposes