The memorial of the General Assembly of the State of Illinois, would respectfully represent, That the benevolent object of the grant, made by the Congress of the United States to the State of Illinois of “section numbered sixteen in every township, for the use of the inhabitants of such township for the use of schools,” must necessarily be frustrated, in many instances by the impracticability of reducing the soil to cultivation.2 Many of the sections thus designated are sterile, situate in morasses, or otherwise unfit for cultivation, and barren of other resources. And this General Assembly believing that the enlightened policy of the nation will look more to the object of the grant, than to its exact terms, indulge the hope that you will permit other tracts, possessing the qualities essential to render them of value, and which will afford the means of promoting the great object of the original grant, to be substituted for those which have been found valueless and unavailable for the purposes designed both by the United States and by this State

Your memorialists, therefore, respectfully pray the passage of a law authorizing the selection of other sections in lieu of such sections numbered sixteen as may be found valueless and unavailable for the purposes designed in the grant.