less important service. This was the establishing of the importance and scope of the constitutional authority and functions of the Supreme Court, as the ordained tribunal peacefully to settle disputes concerning the respective powers and pretensions of the States and the Nation, and to determine finally, whenever presented for judicial decision, all controversies and cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. How lowly in 1801 was the estate of the court in public and professional estimation is most fitly portrayed in many of the Marshall Day addresses. It is sufficient here to refer to the gloomy picture drawn by Jay in his letter declining the Chief Justiceship which Marshall shortly afterwards accepted. The court had failed in the past, Jay declares, to acquire the requisite "public confidence and respect." That was not all. The future appeared equally dark; for he says, "when I left the bench I was perfectly convinced that under a system so defective the court could not obtain the energy, weight and dignity which was essential to its affording due support to the National Government.”

The court in 1801 was in a hostile clime. It was almost without friends. Hardly any so poor as to do it reverence. The Chief Justiceship went begging. No great lawyer wanted it. Marshall successively recommended two other persons, and sought not the place for himself. But from the time he took the helm of the court the unsteady vessel felt his firm hand in its every part and every

movement. With equal skill and courage, and with faith sublime in himself, he safely directed the constitutional course of the infant Republic for a third of a century, in storm and stress, in darkness and dangers, over uncharted and unvoyaged seas, towards unseen lands and an unknown destiny. "Before him lay a vast, untraveled gloom; behind, a wake of splendor."

And what a change Marshall wrought! The popular notions a century ago were deeply tinctured with the doctrines and theories engendered by the French Revolution - the supreme and uncontrollable right of the people to govern. Marbury's Case opened a new chapter in the history of constitutional governments. That decision said to Congress, that is to the people's department, to the law-making power, "if you enact a law in conflict with the Constitution it is utterly void, and the court, although only a co-ordinate department, has the right under the Constitution so to decide, and such decision. is authoritative and final, binding throughout the land upon States and people." But that decision also said to the head of one of the executive departments, acting under the immediate orders of the President, "You, too, are subject to the Constitution and are amenable to judicial authority whenever you deny or violate the legal rights of any individual, for be it known this is a Government of laws, and not of men." Verily a new charter of individual rights and liberties was here proclaimed.

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The decision was not relished. It was received with discontent. It alarmed the party in power. Jealousy of the Supreme Court on the part of the States had existed from the first, and now hostility to it was openly manifested. Intimidation by impeachment was resorted to. Attempts at different times were made in Congress looking to the amendment of the Constitution so as to make the judges removable on the address of two-thirds of both Houses, to change the judicial tenure from life to a fixed term of years, and to alter the Judiciary Act so as to deprive the Supreme Court of the power to examine or revise judgments of the State courts on Federal questions, no matter how conflicting or obviously erroneous such judgments might be. What kept the court afloat in this time of peril? More than anything else it was Marshall's judgments, and, above all, the plain, unanswerable, luminous reasoning by which they were accompanied and on which they rested.

The growth of the court in the public confidence and respect during the century intervening between Marshall's appointment and its centennial observances was signalized in a most impressive manner by one of those coincidences that often so powerfully affect the public mind. On Marshall Day, 1901, the Insular Cases, growing out of our acquisition of foreign possessions and involving their Constitutional status and the power of Congress and of the Executive in respect of them, had been

argued in the Supreme Court, but were still undetermined. The noticeable point is that not only was there no jealousy of the jurisdiction and power of the court on the part of the President, or Congress, or the people; but, on the contrary, these were all calmly awaiting the judg ment of the court, to be accepted, of course, whatever it might be, as authoritative, and to be acted on accordingly by the Government and the people. This extraordinary spectacle of an expectant Nation waiting for the court's deliverance shows how fine and true, fine because true, is Mr. Bryce's statement in that great work which displays in its every part such a deep and clear insight into our political and legal institutions and their workings: "No other man did half so much as Marshall, either to develop the Constitution by expounding it, or to secure for the judiciary its rightful place in the Government as the living voice of the Constitution." And among the chief lessons of Marshall Day is the revelation of the public as well as the professional consciousness that the Supreme Court is, verily, the living voice of the Constitution; and that it is such is due pre-eminently to Chief Justice Marshall.

VI.

It was inevitable that on Marshall Day renewed attention should be called to the original and distinctively American feature in our governmental polity which Jefferson called the "judicial veto." The definite establish

ment of that principle may truly be said to date from Marshall's decision in Marbury against Madison. The nature and effects of this doctrine are discussed in a great variety of aspects in the addresses here published. That its workings with us have been satisfactory is demonstrable from our experience, and, indeed, is now nowhere controverted. Since the time when that principle was settled beyond question by the repeated decisions of the State and Federal courts, all of the States have framed new Constitutions, many of them more than once, and have amended their Constitutions as often as they thought best, new States have been admitted into the Union; and yet in none of the Constitutions, even the latest, has this power of the courts been denied or limited. The doctrine itself was established against earnest opposition; but opposition has long since disappeared. The only existing difference of opinion amongst us is that some persons think the courts exercise too freely the grave power to hold legislative acts unconstitutional, and others that they exercise this salutary power too sparingly. The remarkable fact to be noted is that there is an abso

lute agreement of opinion as to the soundness and utility of the principle itself. It is still more remarkable that notwithstanding our favorable experience with the practical operation of the "judicial veto" on such an extended scale, National and State, for a hundred years, its importance as a factor in the growth and development of