At this time it appears that some disquietude arose in the public mind, both with regard to the alleged severity of discipline to which Penal Servitude prisoners were subjected, and also with regard to the contamination due to the association of all classes of convicts on public works. There was then no classification of prisoners sentenced to Penal Servitude, and all herded together, irrespective of age, antecedents, and habits. This disquietude led the Directors of Convict Prisons to suggest to the Secretary of State that an independent inquiry should be held into the Administration of Convict Prisons, feeling confident that any full and impartial inquiry would tend only to establish the soundness of the principle on which the Convict System was founded and the care with which it was administered. A Royal Commission was accordingly appointed in 1878, with Lord Kimberley as Chairman, and their Report marks another epoch in the history of Penal Servitude. The Committee advised an improved system of Classification by placing in a distinct class those against whom no previous conviction of any kind is known to have been recorded. This was the origin of the "Star Class" System, _i.e._, the formal separation of the First Offender from the rest, which is one of the peculiar features of the English Convict System. Since those days this system of classification has been greatly improved and extended, as will be shown later; but the "Star Class" represents the first and most practical attempt to introduce the principle of segregation of the better from the worse, which has since become so familiar as an essential condition of any well organized Prison System. The Commission approved generally of the rigour which had been introduced into the Penal Servitude System by the Act of 1864, and subsequent Acts, which imposed and facilitated stricter police supervision on discharge. They condemned, however, that provision of the Act of 1864, by which seven years was made the minimum sentence after a previous conviction for felony. They were, however, in favour of retaining the minimum of five years for a sentence of Penal Servitude.