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PREFATORY NOTE.

It is not possible to bring to the study of Marshall's life and work any great new light. Of his intimate personal life comparatively little, save the bare outlines, is known. His work is universally acknowledged to have been more important than that of any other man in formulating and expounding the doctrines of the American system of constitutional law. It is the intention of these volumes to present all of his decisions (in the Supreme Court and on circuit) on that branch of the law (they are nowhere else completely collected), to show how far they have affected or been changed by subsequent cases, to describe the political conditions existing at the time they were given, and to indicate, as far as may be practicable, their effect on constitutional history. So common has been the habit of American lawyers of accepting Marshall's opinions as the final expression of the law, and so firmly have his theories become imbedded in our governmental system, that the praise of his work has been often indiscriminating, and with little understanding, and the task of analyzing his decisions becomes more difficult. The editor has attempted in these volumes, by notes to each case, to give its setting in the history of Marshall's time and

its place in the system of constitutional law; and, in an introductory monograph, to bring together and formulate the results of that analysis. This work has been, in a large measure, the proving and carrying on of the opinions of the late Professor James Bradley Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, who, more than any other man of recent years, has contributed to the better understanding of Marshall's genius.

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