(2) that there should be a Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society in connection with the Prison, and that voluntary subscriptions should be at least an equal amount. (3) that the Society, if required, take charge of the sums earned under the mark system. (4) that the grant should be exclusively for the benefit of prisoners recommended by the Prison authorities as industrious and fairly conducted. (5) that the grant shall not in any case exceed £2, inclusive of the sum earned under the Stage System. The System, however, did not work satisfactorily; and the Departmental Committee on Prisons of 1894, after considering the matter, reported that it did not appear that there was either uniformity of action under definite principles, or that the various Societies were so far organized as a whole that the effect of aid could be satisfactorily ascertained. There seemed to be a great and unnecessary variation in the methods of working. They advised that a special inquiry should be undertaken into the character, and working, and methods, of each Society, and were in favour of an increase in the Government Grant where it was shown that Societies were working on principles approved by the Government, and with success. Such an inquiry was undertaken by the Commissioners in 1896, and, at the end of the following year, a Circular was issued by them prescribing Rules for the future regulation of all Aid Societies. In suggesting these Rules, the Commissioners made it clear that it was not their desire or intention to coerce or interfere with the free liberty of action of Societies which were of course only subject to official control so far as they might draw a subsidy from public funds. They pointed out that "the central authority has opportunities not possessed by individual societies of collating information as to the methods and working of all Societies; and upon the knowledge thus obtained, of forming an opinion as to what are, on the whole, the methods most likely to succeed in attaining the objects which the Societies and the Government have in view: that uniformity of procedure does not necessarily connote official control. As there has been in the past, so there must be in the future, official control to this extent, _viz_:--that it is the duty of the Government to satisfy itself in all cases where there is a grant, however small, from public funds, that the grant is expended in a proper and effectual way on the object for which it is designed: that the Commissioners are, on the one hand, the trustees for the Government grant, and, on the other, the responsible authorities for carrying out the sentences of the law, and, though their strict duty ends when the prisoner has purged his crime, and left the prison gate, common humanity demands that some care shall be bestowed by the State on the discharged prisoner, both in order to relieve his immediate necessities, and to make his re-entry into