At the Mansfield reformatory more prison labor will be utilized further to reduce the cost of the development in Madison county. Furniture and fixtures for the new prison offices and library will be manufactured there and shipped. * * * * * _Parole Test Case in Virginia._--The recent session of the General Assembly of Virginia passed the Allen bill providing that the Penitentiary Board might in its discretion parole a prisoner after he had served three years of his sentence; but exempting from its provisions those convicted of murder in the first degree or of criminal assault. Governor Stuart described this bill as misleading in its title. It should have been, he said, “An act to increase the powers of the board of directors of the penitentiary at the expense of the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the executive.” The Governor referred it to Attorney-General Pollard, who, held not only the bill was unconstitutional, but that the parole act of 1904, which it sought to amend, was likewise unconstitutional. On this advice the Governor vetoed it. In view of the opinion holding the parole law of 1904 unconstitutional, the question arose as to the future conduct of the prison directors. In a statement issued at the time Governor Stuart expressed the view that it was certainly not contemplated in the Constitution that the prison board should sit as a sort of superior court, to review and reverse in criminal cases not only the verdicts of trial juries and the judgments of Circuit Courts, but the deliberate opinions of the Supreme Court of Appeals as well. The Attorney-General upheld the view that any action releasing a prisoner before he had served the specific term for which he was sentenced by due process of law was to upset and reverse the trial court. This power, it was held, was vested by the Constitution exclusively in the Governor, who may grant absolute pardons or may grant pardons with conditions attached, which are in effect paroles. Prior to the act of 1904, under the statute of 1896 and subsequent acts, there was a parole system, under which the prison board from time to time made recommendations to the Governor of those convicts who were, in their judgment, suitable for conditional pardons or paroles, thus acting in an advisory capacity. The act of 1904, which is the one now in question, eliminated this report to the Governor and made it possible for the prison board, in its own discretion, at any time to release any convict after he had served one-half of the term for which he had been sentenced. Under this act the prison board has been from time to time paroling convicts at its own discretion, acting entirely independent of and without connection with the actions of the Governor in granting pardons or conditional pardons, which are in effect paroles.