In Pennsylvania this important change took place previously to the occupation of the new penitentiary at Philadelphia. By a law bearing date April 23, 1829, it was expressly provided, that, after July 1, 1829, convicts should, "instead of the penitentiary punishments heretofore prescribed, be sentenced to _suffer punishment by SEPARATE or solitary confinement at LABOR_." It is further provided, that the warden "shall visit every cell and apartment, and see every prisoner under his care, at least once in every day,"--that the overseers shall "inspect the condition of each prisoner at least three times in every day,"--that "the physician shall visit every prisoner in the prison twice in every week"; and further provision is made for "visitors," among whom are "the acting committee of the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of Public Prisons." Here is the first legislative declaration of what has since been called, at home and abroad, the _Pennsylvania System_. As administered there and elsewhere, it is found to have, in greater or less degree, the following elements: 1. Separation of the prisoners from each other; 2. Labor in the cell; 3. Exercise in the open air; 4. Visits; 5. Books; 6. Moral and religious instruction. Its fundamental doctrine, and only essential element, is _separation of prisoners from each other_, on which may be ingrafted solace of any kind needful to health of body or mind. In 1840, M. de Tocqueville, in his masterly report to the French Chamber of Deputies, recommending the adoption of this system throughout France, accorded to it these characteristics. In the history of this system, its origin is often referred to different places. It is sometimes said to have been first recognized at Rome by Clement XI., as long ago as 1703, in the foundation of a House of Refuge; and again it is said to have appeared some time during the last century in a prison of Holland,--also in one at Gloucester, in England; while it seems to be described with tolerable clearness in the preamble to the fifth section of an Act of Parliament drawn by Howard, in conjunction with Sir William Blackstone, as early as 1779. Whatever may be the claims of these different places, it is now admitted that this system was first reduced to permanent practice, on an extended scale, in Pennsylvania. Indeed, this State is hardly more known in Europe for shameful neglect to pay the interest of her public debt than for her admired system of Prison Discipline. Now, waiving for the present, as entirely irrelevant, the question whether this system can be practically administered so as to be consistent with health, all must admit that it is not the constant, unoccupied, cheerless solitude of the Bastile. Its main object is not solitude, but separation of prisoners from each other, and bringing them under good influences only. In considering the Pennsylvania or Separate System, as now explained, several questions properly arise.