ized people, who have been educated for generations in the art of civil government. It is an ideal government. It is founded upon a compromise between opposite political systems, and it seeks to combine the advantages of each the freedom of a small state with the unity and security of a consolidated empire. It is an artificial system; and, inherently, it is perhaps the weakest known form of government. Based on a division of sovereignty, it is a sovereign within sovereigns, a government within governments, a single state in some things and many states in other things, a unit in its external relations and on matters which affect the general welfare, and composed of many units in its internal government. States and cities have repeatedly striven to realize the Federal idea; but, with three or four exceptions, they have been successful only in an imperfect degree, and for a comparatively short period of time. The most illustrious exception is the United States. History teaches what we should expect from the nature and artificial character of its organization, the ever impending danger to this political system is not consolidation, but the weakness of the Federal bond. The forces which tend to direct the States towards the central union are less strong than the forces which tend to drive them away from it, because the ties of citizenship, local interests, and a common history bind the people to the State and its autonomy.

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Federal unions have always perished from the weakness of the Federal tie, or from conquest. They have never grown into a consolidated state through the destruction of the separate members of the union. It was the weakness of the Federal tie which constantly threatened the disruption of the Achaian League. And the same is true of the United Netherlands. The Swiss Confederation has never suffered from the strength of the central power, but rather from its inborn weakness. The history of our own Federal Union is familiar. We know that for three-quarters of a century after the adoption of the Constitution the grave peril, ever present, sometimes threatening, and once only averted by civil war, was disunion, not consolidation. Historians have always recognized the inherent weakness of a Federal form of government. It was not surprising, therefore, that in 1863 the eminent English historian and scholar, Freeman, after ten years of research and reflection on the subject, should have begun the publication of a work entitled History of Federal Government from the Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States," in which he prophesied the exchange of ambassadors between the United States and the Confederate States before the year 1869. That Freeman never completed his work, that his prophecy proved false, was owing, in a large measure, to the constitutional decisions of Chief Justice Marshall.

Marshall's early conviction of the supreme danger which confronted the Federal Union is stated by Judge Story: "In his view the Republic is not destined to perish, if it shall perish, by the overwhelming power of the National Government, but by the resisting and counteracting power of the State sovereignties." Marshall met and overcame the danger by incorporating into the fundamental law the great fact that our Federal Constitution establishes a perpetual government complete within itself.

Constitutions grow. They do not march alone. National spirit is the product of growth. It is not a sudden creation. A national constitution, to be effective and fulfil the purpose for which it is designed, must reflect the spirit and temper of the people. The life of such a constitution is dependent on the growth of a strong national sentiment. Our Federal Constitution at the time of its adoption was a creation. It did not represent a growth. It was an experiment, a hope, a dream. The people were full of apprehension and dire forebodings as to the result. They saw the spectre of a "kingly crown," the destruction of the States, the subversion of their liberties. They had not grown up to the national idea. Their spirit and temper, their laws and governments, were colonial. Their interests and affections, their habits, prejudices, and past history, bound them to the States. The Colony or State

was their mother, the centre of their political life, and to her they owed allegiance first of all. They were citizens of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia, not American citizens.

Twelve years before Marshall took his seat, the Constitution, in the words of John Quincy Adams, had been "extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant people." The popular vote was undoubtedly against its adoption. The spirit of the times is well illustrated by Patrick Henry, who exclaimed in the Virginia Convention of 1788, when speaking of the framers of the Constitution: "Who authorized them to speak the language of We, the people, instead of We, the States'? States are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government, of the people of all the States." It is seen in the adoption of the Constitution by the narrow majority of three in the New York Convention, ten in the Virginia Convention, and nineteen in the Massachusetts Convention, after the most strenuous labors of its advocates, and under the pressure brought about by the annihilation of public credit, the threatened paralysis of commerce, and the impending dissolution of the Confederation. It is manifested in bitterly denouncing as unconstitutional abuses of power Washington's proclamation of neutrality in 1793 on the outbreak

of the war between England and the French Republic, and the ratification of Jay's treaty with England in 1795. It is exhibited in the statute of the State of Georgia inflicting the penalty of death on any one who should presume to enforce the process of the Supreme Court in the case of Chisholm v. State of Georgia, where the State was held liable for the payment of a private claim; and in the case of the United States v. Peters, where the Governor of Pennsylvania ordered out a brigade of militia to obstruct the service of a Federal writ.

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"Not a year went by," says McMaster, "but one or more States bade defiance to the Federal government." The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799 also bear witness to the want of national sentiment; so, in like manner, the proposed amendment to the Constitution submitted by John Randolph "The Judges of the Supreme Court and all other Courts of the United States shall be removed by the President on the joint address of both houses of Congress." The same state of public feeling is indicated in the popular revulsion against the Federalists which soon swept that party out of power, and later out of existence, and installed the opposition, then known as the Republican party, thirty days after Marshall became Chief Justice.

For thirty-four years Marshall's decisions vindicated the necessity and value of the Constitution.