ADDRESSES

JOHN MARSHALL

Address before Brown University and the Members of the Rhode Island Bar Association on the one hundredth anniversary of the installation of John Marshall as Chief Justice of the United States, delivered in Sayles Memorial Hall, Providence, on February 4, 1901.

LADIES ANd GentlemEN :

U

PON the first meeting of the Supreme

Court of the United States in the city of Washington, one hundred years ago to-day, John Marshall took his seat as Chief Justice. This day has been appropriately called "John Marshall Day," and it is a fitting time for the Bar Associations, the Courts, and the representatives of our seats of learning, assembled together, to recall the commanding and unique position the great Chief Justice occupies in our constitutional history, and to remind the people of the inestimable blessings which have flowed from his judicial labors. It is also fitting for the President of the great Federal Commonwealth, which bears the indelible impress of his genius, to request the Congress to observe with

appropriate exercises the centennial anniversary of the day he became the head of the Supreme Court and began his immortal work of upbuilding the Constitution.

It was recently said with much truth: "John Marshall yet remains the great unlaurelled hero of early American history." His work is not generally known nor fully appreciated. Such is the common fate of the highest judicial achievements. From their nature they do not attract popular attention; and yet a simple entry on the docket of the Supreme Court of the United States may affect the destiny of the nation more than Webster's reply to Hayne, or Dewey's victory in Manila Bay. We live under a government of law. Our supreme law is embodied in a written Constitution, and the judgments of the highest court on constitutional questions may involve the very existence of the Federal Union.

The life of Marshall has been called the constitutional history of the country from 1801 to 1835. He set and fixed in its proper place the keystone of the beautiful and symmetrical arch of States which now spans a continent. He carried the Constitution through its experimental and formative stages, defined its enumerated powers, and clothed them with an authority and living force commensurate with their purpose. He "gradually unveiled" the Constitution, in the words of Bryce, "till it stood revealed in the

harmonious perfection of the form which its framers had designed."

We are to-day what the Constitution as expounded by John Marshall has made us. The character and supremacy of the national government we owe largely to him. Marshall was more than the interpreter of the Constitution. He was the creator of constitutional law as applied to a written Constitution. His luminous judgments determined whether the Constitution should stand or fall. They proved the Constitution created, in the words of Chief Justice Chase, "an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States." They demonstrated that a Federal Union strong enough to perpetuate itself, and supreme within its delegated powers, was not a menace to the independence of the States nor to individual liberty, but was the guardian and shield of both. They defined the relative rights of the States and the Federal government under the Constitution, involving often the momentous question of sovereigntythe fatal rock on which Federal Unions are broken into fragments. They settled beyond challenge or debate the question of sovereignty as a judicial question arising under the Constitution. The only right to dissolve the Union which remained with the States after these adjudications was the right of revolution. They established the novel and striking feature of our political system that the construction and interpre

tation of the supreme law rests with the judiciary department. They vindicated the supremacy of the Constitution over all citizens and all States. They proved beyond question that the Constitution created a government, a composite republic, a nation; not a league, a compact, or a mere confederacy. They undoubtedly preserved the Union in 1861, when the attempt was made to settle constitutional questions by force of arms. Had not the judgments of the Supreme Court, during the thirty-four years Marshall was Chief Justice, established the supremacy of the Constitution as opposed to the doctrine of State sovereignty, the Civil War would have been a war of conquest, and the Federal tie forever severed. "The Southern Confederacy, as the embodiment of political ideas," says Judge Phillips, "surrendered not to Grant, not to Sherman, not to Thomas or to Sheridan, but to the statesman, the jurist and sage, - John Marshall."

The decisions of Marshall have instilled in us the worship of the Constitution. They have built up a national spirit. They have not led to the consolidation of the States, but to the consolidation of national sentiment. They are the foundation of the patriotism, affection, and pride which fill all our hearts as we look upon our country at the opening of a new century, and contemplate with emotion the proud position she occupies among the nations of the earth. They have elevated our form of government in the

eyes of the world, and disproved the judgment of mankind that a Federal Commonwealth is weak and unstable. They have shown that, in the hands of an intelligent people, such a political system may exist in a perfect form for centuries, that it may extend over a vast area, peopled by different races, and may realize under such conditions its high ideal of combining the energy, patriotism, and freedom of a small republic, with the unity, security, and power of a great empire. Speaking of Marshall's decisions in an address before the American Bar Association, Edward J. Phelps declared: "They passed, by universal consent, and without any further criticism, into the fundamental law of the land, axioms of the law, no more to be disputed. They have remained unchanged, unquestioned, unchallenged. They will stand as long as the Constitution stands. And if that should perish, they will remain, to display to the world the principles upon which it rose, and by the disregard of which it fell."

Our national government was moulded and shaped by the master hand of John Marshall. To comprehend the character and greatness of his work, it is important to understand the nature and tendency of the form of government which was organized under the Constitution. Of all political systems a Federal Commonwealth is the most complex, delicate, and elaborate. It can only exist among a highly civil