The first prisoners were embarked from Portland in 1849. Favourable accounts were received of their conduct from Van Dieman's Land and Australia. The System, however, which was bearing good fruits, only remained in operation till 1852, when Van Dieman's Land refused any longer to be made the receptacle for the disposal of malefactors from the Mother-Country, and the cessation of Transportation, and the release of so many desperate characters at home, caused the gravest apprehension in the public mind. There were at that time about 8,000 male convicts in the Convict Prisons in England, and at Bermuda and Gibraltar. The question arose whether the men should be released perfectly free, as had previously been the case of thousands discharged from the Hulks, or whether the plan of granting a Ticket-of-Leave on a principle which had long been established in the Colonies, should be adopted. The Penal Servitude Act, 1853, represents the decision of Parliament on the matter. That Act substituted sentences of Penal Servitude for those of Transportation, four years of the one being deemed equivalent to seven years of the other; and the Secretary of State was empowered to grant to a convict a licence to be at large during the unexpired portion of the original sentence of Transportation. Public opinion remained, however, restless and dissatisfied with the discharge of so many Ticket-of-Leave holders in the Mother-Country, and a formidable public agitation led to the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1856. The Penal Servitude Act of 1857 embodies their recommendation, _viz_:--that the terms of Penal Servitude should be extended to a period corresponding with former sentences of Transportation, and that every punishment by Penal Servitude should, in addition to separate Imprisonment and labour on Public Works, include a further period capable of being abridged by the good conduct of the convict himself, _i.e._, that there should be a remission of part of a sentence of Penal Servitude in the case of those convicts whose conduct in Prison was such as not to deprive them of the indulgence. The portion to be remitted varied from one-sixth in the case of a three years, or minimum, sentence, to one-third of a sentence of fifteen years and upwards. The principal punishment for serious crime became then what it has remained ever since, and involves a triple responsibility on the part of the Judge who passes the sentence, the Secretary of State who fixes the maximum amount of remission, and the Prison Authorities whose duty it is to keep a just account of the conduct and industry which will enable them to reckon the amount of remission to be granted.