It is difficult to say whether the legislature intended this division, which, on the face of it, was a bold step in the way of differentiation, to be more than a reservation in favour of a few exceptional cases, such as are actually mentioned in the Act. The presumption is, having regard to the fact that prisoners treated as First Class Misdemeanants were not to be deemed criminal prisoners, that there was no intention to anticipate an elaborate classification, such as is now laid down, and that it was not realized what a vast importance rested in Classification, strictly so-called, and which finds its expression in the Prison Act, 1898. The powers given to the Secretary of State to make Rules under the Act of 1877 extended to such important matters as the treatment of prisoners awaiting trial, and of debtors; and the Rules then made, although modified in some details, remain essentially the same to-day. The principle of governing prisons by Rule made by the Secretary of State, subject to Parliamentary sanction, was still further developed in the Act of 1898, and may be said now to have been finally accepted as a wise and effective method for securing progressive change and reform without the necessity for revoking or enacting by the machinery of an Act of Parliament. The Commissioners appointed under the Act took over their new duties on the 1st April, 1878. On that day, thirty-eight out of the 113 existing Prisons were closed. Sir Edmund Du Cane, the Chairman of the new Board of Commissioners, had been for some time Chairman of the Board of Directors administering Convict Prisons, and his influence soon became predominant till his retirement in 1895. His great administrative powers were devoted to securing the objects which, in his opinion, the Prison Act, 1877, intended to secure, _viz_:--(1) the application to all Prisons of a uniform system of punishment: (2) the best possible method for carrying out the primary object of punishment, _viz_:--the repression of crime: and (3) economy in expense. As to (1), uniformity was secured by the adoption, as in the Convict Prisons, of a Progressive Stage System: by the adoption of a uniform and scientific dietary: a uniform system of education: a uniform system of first class hard labour by means of the treadwheel, the task for which was regulated by the most minute instructions as _the_ task for hard labour in Prisons.