Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/43

Rh then, it appears to me best to suggest leaving the question of all spiritual and moral work exactly where it is—where it almost must be, gathering round the clergy and ministers, everything affecting it being referred to them, and of course all funds and charities now in their hands being as hitherto managed and distributed wholly under their direction; but at the same time to ask them to consider whether they could single out someone from each ecclesiastical district, or from any given group of visitors, who should be a secretary to the others—a means of communication between them and the people dealing as officials or theorists with questions affecting large bodies of the poor.

I will describe what I think such a secretary should be and do.

She need at first have no special knowledge of laws affecting the poor, institutions established for them, or the principles of action which those who have thought most on the