A local authority of this kind would confer a great boon upon the agricultural poor if they could renovate the old idea of a common. Allotment grounds are most useful, but they do not meet every want. The better class of cottagers, who have contrived to save a little money, often try to keep a cow, and before the road surveyors grew so strict, they had little difficulty in doing so. But now the roads are so jealously and properly preserved purely for traffic, the cottager has no opportunity of grazing a cow or a donkey. It would not be possible in places where land is chiefly arable, nor in others where the meadow-land is let at a high rent, but still there are places where a common could be provided. It need not be the best land. The poorest would do. Those who graze should pay a small fee--so much per head per week. Such a field would be a great benefit, and an encouragement to those who were inclined to save. In almost every parish there are a number of public charities. Many of these are unfortunately expressly devised for certain purposes, from which they cannot be diverted without much trouble and resorting to high authorities. But there are others left in a loose manner for the good of the poor, and the very origin of which is doubtful. Such are many of the pieces of land scattered about the country, the rent of which is paid to the churchwardens for the time being, in trust for the poor. At present these charities are dissipated in petty almsgiving, such as so much bread and a fourpenny-piece on a certain day of the year, a blanket or cloak at Christmas, and so on, the utility of which is more than doubtful. Stories are currently believed of such four penny-pieces purchasing quarts of ale, and of such blankets being immediately sold to raise money for the same end. A village council would be able to suggest many ways in which the income of these charities could be far better employed. The giving of coal has already been substituted in some places for the fourpenny-piece and blanket, which is certainly a sensible change; but if possible it would be better to avoid so-called charity altogether. Why should not the income of half a dozen villages lying adjacent to each other be concentrated upon a cottage hospital, or upon a hospital for lying-in women, which is one of the great desiderata in country places. Such institutions afford charity of the highest and best character, without any degradation to the recipient. At the present moment the woman who has lost her reputation, and is confined with an illegitimate child, simply proceeds to the workhouse, where she meets with every attention skilled nurses and science can afford. The labourer's wife is left to languish in a close overcrowded room, and permitted to resume her household labours before she has properly recovered. There is nothing more wretched than the confinement of an agricultural labourer's wife.