After deducting foreign importations of spirits, say
to the amount of six millions of gallons, and allow-
ing for four millions produced from foreign molasses,
there would still remain forty millions of gallons
manufactured from our own materials. Does not
this astound us with its enormity, and alarm us with
its terrific aspect!

An excise of one shilling a gallon, would produce
a revenue of five millions of dollars a year. Double
the duty, and you will raise a fund that will pay
off the national debt, and line and intersect the
country in all directions with canals and roads.

Every considerable increase in the price of any
article, tends to check its consumption. And hence,
the revenue of the country would be an auxiliary to
its morality—a noble union in the eye of a great
statesman.

I am, Dear Sir, your friend, DE WITT CLINTON.
To THOMAS EDDY. New York, 4th mo. 24th, 1823. RESPECTED FRIEND,

I am particularly obliged by thy kind attention,
in sending me a copy of thy last work on penal juris-
prudence. I have read it with peculiar satisfaction,
and, considering that the circulation of it would be
highly useful in this country, it is intended to have
five hundred copies immediately printed, to be sent to
persons of influence in the different states, who are
known to be friendly to the improvement of the peni-
tentiary system.

It is expected the prison in Philadelphia

will pro-
bably be completed this year. I am well satisfied
the plan they propose, of having the convicts closely
confined in the cells, to work during the day, is wrong;
and I have no doubt they will abandon it in a year
or two. Let them sleep in their respective cells, and
work during the day in the yard and shops, attended