annually receive a certain proportion, was unable to digest such an accumulation. The demoralization which infected the ordinary gaols was as nothing compared to that which pervaded the Hulks,--filthy derelict vessels crowded with unclean and abandoned mortals who were allowed absolutely free intercourse with each other, and who were subjected to no supervision beyond that exercised by a sentry or two with loaded muskets. In this emergency extra prison accommodation was hurriedly provided. Portsmouth prison was opened in 1852; Dartmoor (originally designed for the detention of French prisoners-of-war, but long disused) was converted into a convict establishment in 1855, and a new prison at Chatham was made ready in the year following. In this way the immediate necessity was partially relieved; but for the complete solution of the difficulty, a radical reform of the whole penal system had to be devised. Convicts who had been sentenced to transportation could not in common fairness be detained in English prisons for the whole period of their sentences, and there was no law which authorized any remission. Prisoners felt that they had a grievance, and mutinous outbreaks occurred at Dartmoor, Portland and Chatham.[226] Under these circumstances a "Penal Servitude Act"[227] was introduced, which provided that henceforward penal servitude was to be substituted for transportation as the punishment for all offences too serious to be met by simple imprisonment, yet not of sufficient enormity to deserve a sentence of fourteen years; at the same time it was notified that those persons, then in confinement, who had been condemned to transportation were to be released with a free pardon after the expiration of from half to two-thirds of their original sentence. In 1857 another act was passed, authorizing the Secretary of State conditionally to discharge convicts undergoing penal servitude in England, before they had served their full term. This system, popularly known as the Ticket-of-leave system, was sound in theory, and whenever properly administered has proved both beneficial to prisoners and harmless to society. But when first inaugurated it produced the most disastrous consequences. Under present conditions a convict can only earn remission by good behaviour and constant industry, generally leaving the prison a better man than when he entered it, even if he is not entirely reformed; whilst under the old conditions, incarceration corrupted the novice in crime, and still further hardened the habitual offender. The last hulk was closed in 1857, and a few years afterwards the effect of the unavoidable policy of turning loose unreformed gaol-birds was fully experienced, and the sequel made apparent in the criminal statistics of the period.