made alarmingly complex by the establish ment of collateral semi-sovereignties in the shape of the thirteen States."— (Magrucler.) The construction of that paper was concededly the paramount responsibility of the Court. It presented some of the most mo mentous questions that ever came before a human tribunal; and, for their wise solution, it was the marvelous powers of Chief Justice Marshall on which his associates mainly re lied. By their choice he prepared and deliv ered the vast majority of the Court's opinions on constitutional questions. His insight was so keen, his reasoning so cogent, his argument so persuasive, his illustration so clear, and his conclusion so irresistible that there were but few dissents from his matured views, and fewer instances in which he, from inability to convince the other Judges, himself had occasion to dissent. Though largely so, his deliverances, how ever, were, of course, not altogether the product of his own wonderful mind. He could but have been materially aided by con ference with the other distinguished mem bers of the Court, and by the arguments of one of the ablest Bars that ever practiced before any tribunal.1 There are two things which I want to say about Justice Marshall's judicial career, and neither has the merit of novelty. After studying his opinions and before reading either his biographies or any essays upon his character, every student from 1801 to the present moment has been struck by the singular simplicity anc^ clearness of state ment and by the naturalness of the argu ment of the great Chief Justice. As the stu dent advances from sentence to sentence, he says to himself, of course that proposition is true and is self-evident. I could have thought it and could have said it. until when he has finished and has taken in the massive force and power of the linked and completed argu ment, he says, this is, as an exhibition of mental strength, incomparable. 'Honorable W. C. Caldwell, Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee.
The second thing is Judge Marshall's in sight into the nature of our dual system of government, and his foresight of the dangers from lax theories in regard to the supremacy of the Federal government in its own realm. One of his successors on the bench, Judge Daniel, also from Virginia, who, as Justice Brown has told us, wrote eighty-four opin ions and dissented one hundred and eleven times during his nineteen years of judicial life, generally spo'ke of the communities now constituting the States of this Confederacy and described the Federal Government as a creature or agent of the States. In the mind of Judge Marshall, who, some one, I think, has said was a priceless legacy of the dying Federalist party to the country, and who un derstood, appreciated and abhorred the idea of a Confederacy, these theories of the Judge Daniel class condemned the country to per petual weakness and impotence. The pres ent working, efficient capacity of the Consti tution, the strength of the power and dignity which the Federal government now possesses are due to Marshall's wisdom and foresight. If a man of narrow theories or of weak cour age had been Chief Justice when Cohens v. Virginia was decided this country would have been a petty third rate power with not much more vigor and capability of expansion than it had under the articles of confedera tion. . . . John Marshall, plain of speech and modest in manner, wrote, for all time, upon a half dozen quires of foolscap paper, the principles which made us a nation, with the right, either by the civil or military arm, to enforce the universal execution of its powers, and to exact non-interference with its property or its authority.1 Determining the boundaries and establish ing the vital and fundamental principles of our Constitution, was Marshall's distinctive work. On this his fame- chiefly rests. Before Agamemnon there were many heroes. There are in English and American jurisprudence 1 Judge Shipman.
