John MarslialL many great Judges. Aside from Marshall's services as the main creator of the Federal constitutional law there are English and American Judges, not a few, who have as wide or a wider fame than Marshall. I may mention among his contemporaries in this country, Story, Shaw and Kent. . . . Unlike Kent, Marshall does not owe the eminence and renown which inspire the pub lic honors of this day, to services in the field of general jurisprudence, although these were great, but to his judicial work as the first and greatest expounder of the principles of the Federal Constitution. It has not been easy for me to find any single term which precisely and -fully describes the labors of Marshall in this respect. He was, indeed, an expounder of the Constitution. But he was much more than a mere expounder. Mr. Webster in his day was called, and not un justly, the great expounder of the Constitu tion. In our jurisprudence as Marshall left it our Constitution means what the judicial depart ment holds that it means. Marshall, in the course of his long service as Chief Justice, construed and expounded for the first time, nearly all the leading provisions of the Con stitution, and in this he performed an original work of the most transcendent importance, and one which it is the universal conviction no one else could have performed as well. But the work after all was that of a Judge and not that of a statesman, since he was confined to the written text of the Constitu tion. It was this supreme work of Marshall that carried our Constitution successfully through its early and perilous stages and set tled it on its present firm and immovable foundations. Marshall had the good fortune, common to other Judges, "to connect his reputation with the honor and interests of a perpetual body of men." But in addition he had the golden opportunity, which he promptly took by the hand, the singular, the solitary felicity, of connecting his name and fame imperishably with the origin, development and estab
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lishment of constitutional law and liberty in the great American Republic. He is, there fore, entitled to be regarded as something more than a mere commentator. He is, more than any other man, entitled to be called the creator of our Federal constitutional law and jurisprudence.1 These judgments and these opinions are now a part of the Constitution itself, and without them it would have been incomplete. They construed as many powers out of the Constitution as were unquestionably enu merated in it. They are pellucid as the mountain stream, yet have the force of the torrent. They contain the fountain and termination of juridical construction; at once its picture alphabet and completed language. Their topics being patriotic make their style lofty and pure. They contain more logic than images or illustrations. They abound in plain statements, rather than luxuriant amplifications. They put a gleam under every fact and cast a sunbeam upon every deduc tion, and thus made them so clear that time, criticism and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. The strain of legal disserta tion is relieved by their Socratic method of reasoning. They took the inarticulate cry and the oppressed desire of the people for legal definitions of their rights and gave expression to one and action to the other, and sounded the weal and worth of civil lib erty in strains as noble as can be found in poetry. They suggested, as I believe, to Webster his ideas of the "closeness." "com pactness" and "inseparability" of the Union, and to Lincoln, "the people," "the whole of the people," and "all of the people. And all in all. considering their character, the time at and the circumstances under which they were formed and delivered; their plan, purpose and effect; they constitute the great est and grandest judicature the world ever produced, and will endure as long as the ele ments of the stars.2 1 Honorable John F.'Dillon. 2 Honorable John N. Baldwin, of Council Bluffs, Iowa,
