They should have at present no power of originating reforms.
Every alteration proposed to be made in an ordinance should be published, at least two months beforehand, in the Oxford University "Gazette," and in the Cambridge "Reporter," and a locus standi for opposing on any grounds of public policy any alteration should be given pretty freely to persons by their office or position likely to feel a reasonable interest in the well-being of the University.
The preamble of the Act framing this Visitatorial Body might rehearse directions which it was thought desirable for reform to take, and this might form a nucleus round which a common law for the guidance of the Body would gather itself as the basis of their decisions.
I believe that an appeal to a Court so constituted would be welcomed by all the colleges in their turn, as they warmed to the work of reformation. The process would be gentle, gradual, deliberate, and, I believe, under the healthy influence of an instructed public opinion, almost unmixedly beneficial.
The initiation would be, at all events, in the hands of persons thoroughly conversant with what they were doing. The worst that could happen would be a slowness on the part of the colleges to avail themselves of the power of reformation, a worst it seems to me far better than the hasty, one-sided, uninstructed revolution, which, it is to be feared, an executive Commission at the present moment would inaugurate.
