er went after him, and after
him the supervisor; and they had _table-books_, and _gauging-rods_,
and _dockets_, and _permits_; permits for sellers, and permits for
buyers, and permits for foreign spirits, printed in red ink, and
permits for British spirits, in black ink; and they went about night
and day with their hydrometers, to ascertain the strength of spirits;
and with their gauging-rods, to measure _wash_. But the pertinacious
distiller was still flourishing; permits were forged; concealed pipes
were fabricated; and the proportion between the _wash_ and _spirits_
was seldom legal. The commisioners complained, and the legislators
went to work again. Under a penalty of one hundred pounds, distillers
were ordered to paint the words _distiller, dealer in spirits_, over
their doors; and it was further enacted, that all the distillers
should furnish, at their own expense, any kind of locks, and
fastenings, which the revenue officers should require for locking up
the doors of their own furnaces, the heads of their own stills, pumps,
pipes, &c. First, suspicions fell upon the public distiller for
exportation; then his utensils were locked up; afterwards the private
distiller was suspected, and he was locked up: then they set him and
his furnaces at liberty, and went back in a passion to the public
distiller. The legislature condescended to interfere, and with a new
lock and key, precisely described in an act of parliament, it was
hoped all would be made secure. Any person being a distiller, who
should lock up his furnace or pipes with a key constructed differently
from that which the act described, or any person making such illegal
key for said distiller, was subject to the forfeiture of one hundred
pounds. The padlock was never fixed upon the mind, and even the lock
and key, prescribed by act of parliament, were found inefficacious.
Any common blacksmith, with a picklock in his possession, laughed at
the combined skill of the two houses of parliament.

This digression from the rewards and punishments of children, to the
distillery laws, may, it is hoped, be pardoned, if the useful moral
can be drawn from it, that, where there are great temptations to
fraud, and continual opportunities of evasion, no laws, however
ingenious, no punishments, however exorbitant, can avail. The history
of coiners, venders, and utterers, of his majesty's coin, as lately
detailed to us by respectable authority,[67] may afford further
illustra