John Marshall. questions, involving the relations of the States to each other and to the weak and in efficient central government, and to the com mon enemy, with whom peace had just been concluded; questions of quasi-political and international character, requiring for their solution not technical learning or prece dents, but the right application of general principles and rules which had to be first thought out and formulated and then estab lished by force of pure reasoning. For this high order of work Marshall's talents were peculiarly fitted. His career as a soldier, bringing him in contact with men from different States, ani mated by the same spirit of resistance to a common enemy, threatened by the same perils and striving for the same goal, accus tomed him, as he himself says, to the idea of a common country and a common government, co-extensive with the territory of the several States, and broadened his sympathies and in terests beyond the confines of his State, thus emancipating his mind from the provincial spirit of the times and preparing him for broad and national views on questions of common concern.1 .... In the Courts of his State Marshall was acknowledged to be the leader of the law yers: intellectually, he was supreme among his legal associates. . . . There were indeed great lawyers in those days; then was the time of law as both a science and a sentiment. The spirit of com mercialism had not permeated or colored its fine air. Argument and advocacy, in behalf of justice, were its shining attributes. The compensating fee was not a principal object of the lawyer's endeavor; the selfish dollar was still subservient to the duty of his high calling. Those were the days when the ap peals of Patrick Henry to courts and juries swept great causes to vindication and vic tory; when the logic of Jeremiah Mason and Luther Martin relentlessly broke down and pulverized all barriers of sophistry, and Dan1 Honorable Joseph P. Blair, of New Orleans.
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iel Webster stood colossal in reason, wisdom, argument, and walked before judicial tri bunals with intellectual footfalls whose echoes are heard even unto this clay. A glor ious time indeed it was of lawyers; "there were giants in those days;" and among them was John Marshall,— youthful, strong, the equal of any, if not the superior of all.1 Marshall had naturally a legal mind, and, at the time he came to the Bar, he was not confronted with a deluge of discordant de cisions nor with the many questions of com mercial law, which has advanced in the past century into a department of the law of itself. He had to lay the foundation of his legal learning deep in the common law, which came to us from the mother country, and with the text books of that clay, and the de cisions from Westminster Hall, he acquired a vast amount of technical learning, which it is difficult to acquire from case study of the present time. His arguments at the Bar evinced the depth of his technical knowl edge, as well as the strength of his wisdom.' His grasp of legal principles was intuitive. His aptitude for his chosen profession was apparent. Hosts of friends were attracted to him because of his splendid intellect, his lofty character and his genial nature. He at once took position in the foremost rank of the profession and fortified it at every trial of strength. He was entirely without those arts which are commonly designated by the phrase "the graces of oratory. The char acter and habits of his mind were already established. His talent was analytical and constructive. He would have been meta physical if he had not been intensely practical. He never interrupted the flow of his own discourse. He restated no proposition. He made no room for catch phrases. His sentences were incisive, and every sentence was a step in the direct and resistless progress 1 Honorable Luther Laflin Mills, of Chicago.
- Honorable William Pinkney Whyte, of Baltimore,
former Governor of Maryland.
