“ When, therefore, in the course of the many provisions for collecting the tax and for preventing any evasion of its due payment the statute prohibits the putting of anything else in the barrel or package, etc., after it has been branded or stamped, it seems to us the natural meaning of the language limits the addition to anything of a taxable nature, and does not include an article which is not taxable, is wholly harmless, and added for a purpose not illegal or is itself improper. ”

“ The government, however, contends that it is wholly immaterial whether the coloring matter added is not itself taxable; it is, within the terms of the statute, something 'else than the contents which were' in the barrel when it was lawfully stamped by the officer of the revenue; and, if the person who adds the coloring matter subsequently sells the barrel and contents, such act subjects them to forfeiture, and renders the person making the sale subject to the penalty named in the first part of the section. ”

“ A liquor dealer having a properly stamped barrel in his possession might violate the law and empty the contents of the barrel without destroying the stamps, and might then dispose of the barrel, so stamped, to an illicit distiller, who might then endeavor to perpetrate a fraud upon the revenue by filling the barrel with nontax-paid spirits, but we do not see that the prior addition, as mentioned, of coloring matter to the contents of the barrel, would aid him in his attempt, nor would the absence of such matter tend in any degree to its prevention or detection. ”