WILLIAM LINDSAY.

the most enlightened courts of the world, and were everywhere, as they yet are, received as the highest authority. Independent of and aside from the unexampled jurisdiction necessarily following the power and duty of American judges to pass on the authority of the law-making power, Marshall, in the arena of pre-existing jurisprudence, rivalled Mansfield as a common law judge, and surpassed Eldon as a chancellor.

He was not merely a great lawyer and a great judge, but as a lawyer and judge he shone with such resplendent greatness that the world has well nigh forgotten his accomplishments as a writer and his capacity as a statesman. He served less than six months in the Federal House of Representatives, yet at the end of that brief period was recognized as the leading member of his party and the ablest defender of the administration in power.

The short time he acted as Secretary of State gave him no opportunity to demonstrate his capacity for dealing with foreign affairs. Outraged by both France and Great Britain, the United States occupied a humiliating position. Too proud to submit to insults and too weak to resent them, they could only hope to contend with either of those nations by taking advantage of the war going on between them. Under these depressing surroundings, Marshall still had the courage to declare that the United States did not hold themselves in any degree responsible to France or Great Britain for their negotiations with the other of those powers, and that they had repelled and would continue to repel injuries not doubtful in their nature, and hostilities not to be misunderstood.

Whether, if Marshall had remained in the State Department, the war with Great Britain, which commenced in 1812, would have been precipitated at an earlier day, is one of those propositions about which no satisfactory opinion can be formed.

Certain it is, that during Mr. Jefferson's admin

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istration, and during the first term of Mr. Madison's, we did submit to injuries not doubtful, and to hostilities that could not be misunderstood.

It is not to be said that the opinions of Judge Marshall have never been questioned or disputed. Several of them

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have been modified and some virtually overruled. who recognize his greatness as a lawyer and his superiority as a Judge, decline to accede to his reasoning in some instances, or to the justice of his conclusions in others. There is, however, a general-I may say almost universal-consensus of opinion, that he was entitled to the position he won in public estimation, as the ablest constitutional lawyer of his day, and the greatest Judge the country has yet produced.

The problems arising out of our late treaty with Spain have awakened a new interest in constitutional law. Students are eagerly searching the opinions of the Supreme Court rendered while Marshall was the Chief Justice, and on every hand those opinions are being patiently and laboriously investigated, with the assurance that they will shed light on the difficult questions with which the executive, legislative and judicial departments of the government are now beset.

The cases of Loughborough vs. Blake and The Insurance Company vs. Canter have taken on new importance and have again become landmarks in the literature of constitutional law. Although Loughborough vs. Blake involved the single question, whether Congress had the right to impose a direct tax on the District of Columbia, the reasoning of the decision, it is claimed, carries the Constitution to the remotest confines of all the domain over which the jurisdiction of the United States may extend, however acquired, by whom peopled, and without regard to the possibilities of establishing order or maintaining peace through literal obedience to constitutional limitations.

WILLIAM LINDSAY.

As the converse of this proposition, it is urged that, when we find the Supreme Court, as in the case of the Cherokee Nation against the State of Georgia, declaring that the Indian countries are admitted to comprise part of the United States, and are so completely under the sovereignty and dominion of that government that an attempt to acquire the lands or form political connections with the Indian tribes, would be an invasion of our territory, and an act of hostility to our government, and then find it declared in the case of Worcester vs. Georgia, that we have, by repeated treaties, recognized and treated the Indian Nation as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, we are tempted to ask why those treaties have been upheld and enforced by the courts, if the Constitution ex proprio vigore extends to all countries that may become subject to the dominion or jurisdiction of the United States. The great court over which John Marshall presided, and the reputation and influence of which he did so much to establish, continues to perform its duties and exercise its functions as the arbiter of final resort in all cases of constitutional difficulty, and some of these interesting: questions are now before it for adjudication.

It is fortunate that we have a tribunal commanding public respect and public confidence, the mandates of which the people accept without regard to political affiliations or to preconceived opinions. This tribunal has nothing to do with questions of policy, or with the motives of Congress, or with the wishes of the President. To the constitutional power of the legislative and executive departments the courts address their attention, and this is the beginning and the end of their duty and jurisdiction. In yielding obedience to the decrees of the courts we do not obey the judges, but the Constitution and the law, and obedience to law is the first duty of the citizen. Among the greatest, if not the very greatest achievement of John Marshall, was his success

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ful inculcation of this lesson, a lesson that elevates the law, promotes good order and insures the stability of gov ernment. As was impressively said by Sir James Bryce, it forms the mind and temper of the people, trains them to habits of legality, strengthens their conservative instincts and their sense of the value of stability and permanence in political arrangement. It makes them feel that to comprehend their supreme instrument of government is a personal duty, incumbent on each of them, and familiarizes them with and attracts them by ties of pride and reverence to those fundamental truths on which the Constitution is based.

After he had served twenty-eight years on the Supreme Bench, John Marshall, at the instance of his immediate neighbors, took his seat as a member of the convention called by Virginia to amend and reform the constitution which she adopted in 1776. No such body of men ever came together in any other State of the Union. As members of that convention sat William Branch Giles, the Governor of the Commonwealth; Littleton W. Tazewell, a Senator in Congress; John Randolph, of Roanoke; Philip Pendleton Barbour, the statesman and jurist; Benj. Watkins Leigh, afterwards a United States Senator; James Madison and James Monroe, ex-Presidents of the United States; John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and many others whose fame, though less extended, were distinguished for ability and learning. A cotemporary writer, sketching the Chief Justice at this period, said of him that "his appearance was revolutionary and patriarchal. Tall, în a long surtout of blue, with a face of genius and an eye of fire, his mind possessed the rare faculty of condensation. He distilled an argument down to its essence." In this convention, speaking in defense of the county court system of Virginia, John Marshall gave expression to his conception of the character and duties of the judiciary in this language: "Advert, sir, to the duties of a judge. He has to pass be

WILLIAM LINDSAY.

tween the government and the man whom that government is prosecuting. Between the most powerful individual in the community and the poorest and most unpopular. It is of the last importance that in the exercise of these duties, he should observe the utmost fairness. Need I press the necessity for this? Does not every man feel that his own personal security and the security of his property depends on that fairness? The judicial department comes home in its effects to every man's fireside; it passes on his prosperity, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to the last degree important that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience? I have always

thought, from my earliest youth until now, that the greatest scourge an angry heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and sinning people was an ignorant, corrupt and dependent judiciary."

If John Marshall had no other claim on the American people, the utterances of these sublime sentiments would entitle him to perpetual remembrance.

His public life commenced with the Revolutionary War. He lived through the critical period of our country, from the close of that war to the organization of the government under the Constitution. Devoted to the union of the States, he was an ardent friend and a supporter of the Constitution.

Without pretending to respect the voice of the people, emotionally or hysterically expressed, John Marshall let no opportunity pass to announce that the people are the source of all power, and that their will within the limitations they have permanently established, when regularly and deliberately declared, is the law of the land. His theory of our government was: "That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been