It was about this time that, under the influence of Blackstone, Howard, and others, what was known later as the Penitentiary System for the treatment of Crime began to be considered in England, and an Act was passed in the year 1778 for the introduction into the Prison régime of the three factors on which the so-called Penitentiary System rested, _viz_:--separate confinement, hard labour, and instruction--secular and religious. Although the System was commenced in good earnest in a few places, _e.g._, Petworth and Gloucester, under the auspices of keen prison reformers (at these places, the Duke of Richmond and Sir G.O. Paul) it was not till some fifty years later that general interest was attracted by the experiments being made in the United States, where the rival Systems--"Cellular" and "Associated," as carried out at Philadelphia and Auburn, respectively, have become historical. Although historically our Prison System may be said to date from the Prison Act, 1778, a long, dismal history of ill-considered administration was destined to intervene before the principles of penal science, as now understood, obtained expression. It is probable that the discovery of Australia by Captain Cook was the "_mésure de circonstance_" which determined the prison history of this country for nearly fifty years. The easy methods and means of transportation which this great Colony afforded, relieved Parliament of the necessity of inventing any new and wise methods for the punishment of crime. The system instituted in 1788 for the transportation of offenders to the Australian Colonies was regularly organized and extensively acted upon up to 1840. It could not, however, survive the condemnation of the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1837. It was condemned absolutely, as being unequal, without terror to the criminal class, corrupting to both convicts and colonists, and extravagant from the point of expense. This condemnation of the Colonial System followed closely on another Inquiry of the previous year into the Hulks, and the System of Imprisonment at home.