The annual reports of our Chaplains in nearly every prison, furnish accounts of strenuous efforts, apart from their usual ministrations, for the moral uplifting of their charges. The following is a summary of such efforts recorded during twelve months at a large Metropolitan Prison for males--an eight-day mission: 15 selected preachers occupied the chapel pulpit: 7 attendances by Choral Societies, bands, &c.: 28 special lecturers attended to give secular addresses to lads: a weekly Bible Class or moral lecture to lads by the Chaplain: the organization of a weekly debate among selected prisoners: the floral decoration of the Chapel, &c. Besides all this, there is the personal interest in the prisoner after his release, and many Chaplains and others speak of a correspondence maintained which furnishes abundant testimony that the labour of love during a prisoner's stay in prison has not been in vain. Year by year this great volume of work goes on in our Prisons: it is quietly and unostentatiously performed, and is probably little known and insufficiently appreciated by the general public; and for this reason a somewhat detailed account may not be out of place in an Account of the Prison System of this country. CHAPTER XII. LABOUR IN ENGLISH PRISONS. A great change has taken place in the system of labour both in Convict and Local Prisons during the last twenty-five years. In Convict Prisons this change is due, not, as in Local Prisons, to a different policy or to changes in the law, but to the fact that not only has there been a great reduction in the number of persons sentenced to Penal Servitude, but the opportunity for employment on what was known generally as "Public Works," _e.g._, the excavations at Chatham, the breakwater at Portland, the Dockyard extension at Portsmouth, the Forts at Borstal, has largely disappeared. Such Works in the early days of the English Convict system greatly facilitated the purpose of the Administration by affording means for carrying into effect the object of a sentence of Penal Servitude, which was to create a deterrent effect on the prisoner himself by the execution of a hard day's work, to develop his intelligence by his employment on interesting and productive labour and to give facilities for acquiring a knowledge of all those trades which the construction of such Works involved. Moreover, having regard to the valuable character of the Works referred to, it was possible in those days largely to recoup the cost of maintaining the Prisons. Thus the value of the labour of convicts at Portland, Portsmouth, Chatham and Borstal during the year 1880-1 amounted to £124,000, exclusive of the value of what is known as the domestic service of Prisons, such as baking, cooking, washing, &c., while the cost of maintaining those Prisons in the same year was £147,000. It has never at any time been regarded as an axiom in this country, however, that all prison