The last Public Work of this nature contemplated by the Government was the building of the new harbour at Dover; but though the plan advanced so far that a special prison was actually built at Dover for the location of the necessary number of convicts, the idea was not proceeded with chiefly on account of the great delay and slowness of building operations which is inseparable from the employment of convict labour. The result is that with the exception of quarrying stone, which is still a distinctive feature of the convict labour at Portland and Dartmoor, and reclaiming land for farming purposes (Dartmoor and Parkhurst), the character of the labour in Convict Prisons is more and more approximating to that in Local Prisons. Thus, if we compare the work carried on at the Local Prison of Wormwood Scrubs and at Parkhurst at the present time, we should find that much of the work was practically the same for those undergoing the longer sentences, _e.g._, a considerable number at each Prison would be employed as tailors, smiths and fitters, shoemakers, bricklayers, labourers and carpenters. In Convict Prisons, however, there was till recently no cellular labour, and the hours of labour and the whole system of Administration were adapted to the principle of outdoor associated labour. Now that the quarries employ a continuously diminishing number, the system of labour in both Convict and Local Prisons will be more and more assimilated. Labour in Local Prisons has quite a different history. These Prisons did not come under Government control till 1878. The want of uniformity in their management, leading to an inequality of punishment in different parts of the country, was one of the principal arguments used for the centralization of all Prisons in the hands of the State; and it was specially marked in the matter of Prison labour. The Parliamentary inquiry of 1863, which led to the passing of the Prison Act 1865, while Local Prisons were still under the control of the Local Authorities, laid great stress on this point. In some Prisons, there was complete idleness: in some, unregulated association: in some an active industry conducted with a view to commercial profit: and, in some, a close and melancholy adherence to the rule of separate confinement and its concomitant hard labour. Although, as before stated, the phrase "hard labour" was adopted in Acts of Parliament since the middle of the 18th century, its meaning has never been accurately defined, and there was consequently a great variety in its application. The Prison Act of 1865 attempted to define it, and enacted that hard labour was to be of two classes. First Class,--mainly treadmill, shot drill, crank, capstan, stonebreaking, to which every male prisoner of the age of sixteen and upwards, sentenced to hard labour, was required to be kept for at least three months and might be kept for the whole of his sentence. Any other approved kind of labour was called Second Class.