system of inland highways, and bind the country with a continuous line of road from ocean to ocean.

I hope the General Assembly will urge upon Congress the importance of aiding a central location for such road, extending the track now built due west by way of the Smoky Hill route, thus securing to Missouri and the States south and east the most direct communication to the Pacific coast.

I renew the recommendation made in my inaugural message in reference to the creation of a department of agriculture in connection with the State University. This is required to be done by the fourth section of the fourteenth article of the Constitution.

Under the act of Congress of July 2nd, 1862, the State is entitled to three hundred and thirty thousand acres of land for the endowment of a college for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts. This munificent grant was accepted by the Legislature in a joint resolution. approved March 17th, 1863. By the second clause of the fifth section of the act of Congress above referred to it is provided that no part of the fund created by that act shall be applied, directly or indirectly, to the purchase, preservation or repair of any building or buildings. The State University buildings are ample for the purposes of a Department of Agriculture, and the use of them therefor will save the State the expense of the erection of other buildings, at least until buildings shall be erected elsewhere and offered to the State for this purpose. The lands granted by Congress must, according to the provisions of the act, be selected within our own State, providing there are sufficient unentered lands in the State for that purpose. Of such lands there now remain about five million acres. As the best lands are being rapidly sold, I cannot too earnestly urge upon you the importance of early action to secure the selection of these lands.

The subject of agriculture is one ever entitled to the careful consideration of legislators, and especially commends itself to your attention in the present crisis of our history. The husbandman toils on in humble. silence, while far less deserving interests receive greater fostering care and substantial assistance at the hands of the Legislature. No people have greater reason for pride in the tillers of the earth than we in Missouri, and the elevation of the art of cultivating the soil to a science, is among the first duties of a free State. Let us have an Agricultural College to which the farmer can point with pride, and in which his sons can be prepared to follow more successfully the honorable calling of the parent.

As agriculture is the basis of the wealth of a nation, so is education the safeguard of its liberties. Our own Constitution provides that the right of suffrage in every male now ten years of age or under, shall be dependent on his ability to read and write when he becomes of age. The General Assembly should not fail to exercise the power given by the Constitution to compel parents to send their children to school. A careful revision and amendment of the law for the organization, support and government of common schools is essential to adapt it to the provisions of the Constitution, and to make it systematic, plain and practicable. It is your duty to prescribe the powers and duties of a Board of Education, and to provide for the appointment of a Superintendent of Common Schools, until one is elected as required by the Constitution.

The Constitution also directs the establishment and maintenance of a State University, with departments for instruction in agriculture and natural science, and a Normal professorship.

The State University at Columbia is situated in the central and a fertile portion of the State. The buildings are large, substantial, and indeed elegant, and were erected without cost to the State. This institution is endowed with the fund arising from the sale of the land granted by the act of Congress of March 6th, 1820, to this State, for the use of a seminary of learning. Of this fund, $100,000 is invested in the stock of the State Bank of Missouri, and $23,000 in the stock of the Branch Bank at Chillicothe. The sixth section of the ninth article of the Constitution requires that this stock should be sold and invested in United States, or other securities.

The University, notwithstanding the small amount derived for its support from the dividend of three per cent. per annum declared by the State Bank, is in a healthy and flourishing condition, maintaining a high rank among the institutions of learing in the west. I recommend that provision be made for enlarging, if necessary, the buildings and grounds, and for the further endowment of the University out of the proceeds of the sales of the lands granted to the State by the act of Congress of July 2d, 1862, or otherwise, so as to support the additional professorships contemplated by the fourth section of the ninth article of the Constitution.

The State holds in trust for the Common School Fund $678,967 96, which is invested in stock of the State Bank of Missouri. The Constitution requires that this stock shall be sold, and that you shall prescribe by law the time and manner of sale. I recommend that the proceeds of such sale be invested in United States bonds.

The Missouri Military Institute, provided for by the act of May 13th, 1861, has not been organized. I have not been able to find the deed contemplated by the eleventh section of that act, the delivery of which to the Governor is a condition precedent to the taking effect of the law. The buildings, which were erected by the Masonic order at a large cost, have been almost entirely destroyed by the acts of the public enemy.

In this connection I renew the suggestion made in my inaugural message, that more attention be given in our educational system to those branches of instruction which qualify for military service.

There have been selected and claimed by the State, under the act of Congress of September 28th, 1850, about 5,000,000 acres of land. Up to this date there have been patented 2,642,972 acres, and 1,250,000 acres have been rejected by the Department of the Interior. The claim of the State under the acts of Congress of March 2d, 1855, March 3d, 1857, and March 12th, 1860, will amount to about $250,000 in money and 100,000 acres of land. To secure these claims I recommend that authority be given the Executive to appoint notaries public for the State at large, for the purpose of taking the necessary proofs, under the instructions of the agent appointed under the act of the General Assembly approved January 25th, 1865. I herewith transmit the report of the agent appointed under that act.

The great need of our State is more people. The Board of Immigration, created by an act passed at your last session, has been engaged for six months in disseminating in this country and in Europe, by the circulation of publications and the employment of agents, information concerning the peculiarities and capabilities of our soil, the varieties and localities

of our minerals, the extent and qualities of our timber, the number and availability of our water courses, the nature and adaptability of our climate, the facilities for railway and other communication and transportation, the opportunities for education, the evidences of complete tranquility, and other subjects of interest to those contemplating removal from an old to a new country. The results of the labors of the Board are highly gratifying. The attention of the emigrant from the old world has been so constantly and urgently directed hither, that thousands are embarking thence directly for Missouri, while the immigration here from the northern and eastern States, and in fact from all the free States, is greater than our most sanguine hopes had promised.

The class of people finding homes among us comprises men of intelligence, native energy, and industrious habits, such as are calculated to augment our wealth, and support and strengthen all the best interests of a State.

The adoption by the people, during your recess, of a revised and amended Constitution, devolves upon you at this session the duty of conforming the statutes to its provisions, and of making such enactments as will give force and effect to the general principles contained in the new features of the fundamental law.

I call your attention especially to the provision of the fourth section of the second article of the Constitution, requiring the enactment of a law for a complete and uniform registration of voters. Too much care cannot be exercised in guarding the elective franchise. On the purity of the ballot box depends the security of the dearest rights of the citizen.

It will be your duty to pass a law for carrying into effect the provision. of the twenty-fourth section of the seventh article. A practical method of enforcing this provision would be to require clerks of the courts to report quarterly to the County Court all fees received by them, and attach a penalty to a failure to pay annually into the county treasury the surplus of fees received by them beyond twenty-five hundred dollars, after making the deductions allowed by law.

The third section of the eighth article requires the enactment of a law to provide for the sale of the stock owned by the State in the Bank of the State of Missouri, of which there is, in addition to the Seminary Fund and State School Fund, the sum of $15,558 54 of the Sinking Fund and $508,773 50 of State stock. The time and manner of sale should be placed within the discretion of one or more proper persons, who should have ample time for understanding the real condition of the bank and the true interests of the State in that connection.

In view of the restrictions in the fourth section of the eighth article, I recommend a revision of our general corporation law, so as to afford, for the association of capital for the usual objects of incorporated companies, every inducement and privilege consistent with the constitutional provisions on this subject.

The twelfth section of the eleventh article enables you to enact a statute which will largely contribute to bring to punishment criminals, who, for any cause, are likely to escape justice in the counties where offenses are committed.

There are other provisions of the Constitution, making necessary certain enactments, to which I have called your attention under their appropriate heads.

It is the right of the General Assembly to propose such amendments to the Constitution as a majority of the members elected to each house shall deem expedient. The most recently expressed wish of the people on the subject of this Constitution is their adoption of it as their law; notwithstanding which, and although you were not elected on any issues made in favor of amending the Constitution, I recommend that you submit to the people such amendments as will exempt from the requirements of the second article all officers, trustees, directors or other managers of corporations for benevolent purposes, in which neither the United States, this State, nor any county, city or town is interested as a stockholder, creditor or contributor, as well as all professors and teachers in schools not. endowed, supported or in any manner contributed to by the United States, this State, or any county, city or town.

The twenty-third and twenty-fourth sections of that article ought to be stricken out, and in lieu thereof it should be provided that no person who has served a regular enlistment in the service of the United States in the suppression of the late rebellion, and has an honorable discharge, shall be required to take the oath of loyalty for any of the purposes mentioned in the article, except as provided in the thirteenth section. The men who have fought for the Union should be honored and trusted without an oath to confirm what they have done; and if any of them have wiped out with their blood an error of the first days of the rebellion, we should not ask them to make a record of those errors for the shame of their children. To have been a soldier of the Union should be made a source of just pride and honorable distinction among the citizens of the State, and should carry with it the right of suffrage, without other qualification, except that required by the nineteenth section, even to those not now invested with the right of suffrage.

Deferring to the deliberately expressed judgment of the people in the adoption of the Constitution, and relying upon their wisdom and justice to remedy what may need correcting in it, I shall at this time suggest no other amendments, but, so far as my action is concerned, will patiently await the further expression of their wishes in the light of their experiences and amid the surroundings of peace and prosperity.

The provision requiring the oath of loyalty from ecclesiastical functionaries has been made the occasion for raising the question of the right of the people, in their sovereign capacity, to make such a law. The future good of the State requires that the question of the right of the people to make it be now definitely settled by the Supreme Court of the United States, so that the amendment, when hereafter made, shall be distinctly understood as a privilege given, not as a right acknowledged as superior to the power of the sovereign people of the State.

Many of the brave men who, during the late rebellion, bore the brunt of the battle for the Union and shed luster on the name of Missouri, have been permanently disabled by wounds. It is the duty of the State to care for these men in their decrepitude, misfortune or old age. The rebellion. has impoverished our State, and we cannot endow a home for these deserving heroes, but it is our duty to ask Congress for a grant of land for this purpose, and to go to the extent of our means in contributing to make such an institution what it should be—a retreat where the war-scarred veteran may pass the remainder of his days, the recipient of a grateful and noble charity which carries with it no humiliation.

The present is an important epoch in the history of our State. Freedom has but recently changed the lethargy born of servile institutions into the energy and activity of industrial prosperity. Peace having spread its hallowed influences over the nation, stilling the tempest of bad passions. which had been nourished amid scenes of carnage, the justice and certainties of the law are again the reliance of the people, and it rests with the General Assembly to make steadfast their confidence in the majesty and strength of civil authority. Let our laws be just and wise. Let them be the guarantees of such degree of liberty as will distinguish us among States. Let them be few and plain, and carry with them the power to secure their enforcement. Then, with that confidence in the assistance of God which a firm conviction of right always inspires, we shall enter the opening future in the van of human progress.

On motion of Senator Muench,

The Senate adjourned until 2 o'clock, P. M.

THOS. C. FLETCHER.

EVENING SESSION.

Senate met pursuant to adjournment.

The President in the chair.

On motion of Senator Muench, the Governor's Message was taken up. Senator Frost offered the following resolution:

Resolved by the Senate, That two thousand copies of the Governor's Message be printed for the use of the Senate and officers, and two hundred in addition for the use of the President of the Senate.

Resolution read and adopted.

On motion of Senator Harrison of Marion, the vote on the adoption of the resolution was reconsidered.

Senator Harrison of Marion offered the following amendment :

Amend by adding after the word "message" "and accompanying documents."

Amendment read and agreed to.

The resolution, as amended, was then adopted.

On leave, Senator Baldwin introduced

Senate bill No. 2, entitled

An act for supplying the Revised Statutes, Missouri Reports, Laws of Missouri and the Senate and House journals.