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his life was in accord with his belief. The distinguishing trait of his life and character was one which has been attributed to two of the recent heads of the English judiciary. At the proceedings in Court, in memory of Lord Chief Justice Russell, the Attorney General, Sir Robert B. Finlay, said of the late Chief Justice: "He was simple with the simplicity of a great and kindly nature." A few years earlier Tennyson was reading aloud to some friends his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." After pronouncing the lines — "And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime"— the poet paused, and said there was one man only in the present time to whom those lines applied. The man thus singled out by Ten nyson as sublime in his simplicity was the former Lord Chancellor of England, Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne. So we may truly say of our own great Chief Justice that his most marked characteristic was simplic ity using that term in its highest and best sense. It is, I believe, largely to this trait of sim plicity of mind and heart, that we owe the charm and the effect of Marshall's judicial style.1 MARSHALL'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO INTER NATIONAL LAW.
His services [in giving form and strength to American constitutional law] were so splen did that, for his countrymen, they have cast into the shade those which he rendered in other fields. But out of the United States Marshall's reputation as a great jurist rests rather on what he did towards the develop ment and unification of the law of nations. Marshall, while an officer in the Conti nental army, had attended the law lectures of Chancellor Wythe at William and Mary Col lege, during a lull in the Revolution. It was his only systematic instruction in the learning ef his profession, but it put his feet on solid 1 Professor Smith.
ground. The law of nations then held a larger place in legal education in America than it did a half century or even a century later. Wythe taught it to men eager to hear. The Revolution gave its rules a prac tical importance. Fifteen years later Mar shall had occasion to cross swords with his former instructor on the question of the policy of Jay's treaty. Chancellor Wythe pronounced it insulting to our dignity. Mar shall defended it in a speech which won him general recognition as a master in interna tional law. A few months later he was offered by Washington the position of Minister to France, and although he declined it, Presi dent Adams prevailed upon him, the next year, to go there as one of three special en voys to demand reparation for her seizures of our ships. The rights of neutrals against bel ligerents were to be, from this time forward, one of the main subjects of his study, as our representative abroad, as our Secretary of State at home, and, finally, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His maiden opinion,1 delivered in August, 1801, was a discussion of the rights flow ing from a seizure by the frigate "Consti tution," the old ship which the stirring verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes have kept afloat throughout the century. She had recap tured a German merchantman from a French prize crew, and, in this, his first case, Mar shall had to pass upon at least three import ant and as yet ill-defined points of interna tional law. Here, as always throughout his long service upon the bench, he gave pre cision and certainty to whatever he touched upon. The highest court of England has said that in considering what are the rights of a sovereign as to property of his coming with in the territory of another power, the first authority to consult must always be Mar shall's decision, rendered a few years later, in the case of the Exchange? 'Talbot 7>. Seeman, I Cranch, I. a 7 Cranch, 11 6.
