Address of John F. Dillon.1

A figure heroic, majestical, supereminent, venerable and venerated, holding an unchallenged primacy in our legal, juridical and constitutional history, is that of John Marshall. When we refer to him in the Supreme Court, or when elsewhere we refer to that court, it is not necessary to name Marshall - we distinguish him by the title of "the Great Chief Justice." He has no parallel but himself, and, like the Saladin in Dante's vivid picture of the immortals, he stands by himself apart. Pinkney's saying is well known- that Marshall was born to be the Chief Justice of any country in which Providence should cast his lot; and he came to his own one hundred years ago this day, when, at the first term of the Supreme Court ever held in the new Federal city of Washington, he put on his robes of office, took the oath to support the Constitution (and well he kept it), and assumed his place

1 This address, entitled "A Commemorative Address on Chief Justice Marshall," is reprinted from the 24th Annual Report of the New York State Bar Association for 1901. There was prefixed to the address, in the official pamphlet containing the Marshall Day proceedings, published by the State Bar Association, the following mottoes: The Constitution of the United States is a written instrument; a recorded fundamental law; it is the bond, and the only bond, of the Union of these States; it is all that gives us a National Character."- DANIEL WEBSTER.

"No other man did half so much as Marshall, either to develop the Constitution by expounding it, or to secure for the judiciary its rightful place in the government as the living voice of the Constitution. . . . The Constitution seemed not so much to rise under his hands to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled by him till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfection of the form which its framers had designed. That admirable flexity and capacity for growth which characterize it beyond all other rigid or supreme Constitutions is largely due to him, yet not more to his courage than

at the head of a tribunal which, in its short existence of eleven years, had already had four Chief Justices. What a wonderful transformation. He found the place one that no great lawyer coveted; he left it, after a continuous service of thirty-four years, the most commanding, the most exalted, the most illustrious judicial office the world has ever seen. These are not words of professional enthusiasm or patriotic zeal, but are (as I trust this address will show) words of truth and soberness.

John Jay, in 1795, on being elected Governor of New York, resigned as Chief Justice, and Rutledge not having been confirmed, and Cushing having declined, Ellsworth was appointed in March, 1796. Ellsworth having served until October, 1799, and being commissioned as one of the Envoys Extraordinary to France, resigned the Chief Justiceship from Paris in November, 1800. President Adams, without consulting Jay, again nominated him to to his caution."- BRYCE, American Commonwealth, Vol. I, pp. 261, 375.

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'When, indeed, I look back upon your judicial labors during a period of thirty-two years, it is difficult to suppress astonishment at their extent and variety, and at the exact learning, the profound reasoning and the solid principles which they everywhere display. Other judges have attained an elevated reputation by similar labors in a single department of jurisprudence. But in one department (it need scarcely be said that I allude to that of constitutional law) the common consent of your countrymen has admitted you to stand without a rival. Posterity will assuredly confirm, by its deliberate award, what the present age has approved as an act of undisputed justice."- Mr. Justice STORY in the Dedication, 1833, of his work on the Constitution to MARSHALL Life and Letters of Story, Vol. II, p. 132.

The address also appeared in the Albany Law Journal, for March, 1901, volume 63, page 83; and in the American Law Review for March-April, 1901, volume xxxv, page 161.

be Chief Justice, and he was confirmed in December, 1800. Mr. Adams strongly urged him to take the place, saying: "Nothing will cheer the hopes of the best men so much as your acceptance of this appointment. You have now a great opportunity to render a most signal service to your country." In his letter of declination. to President Adams, Jay gave his reasons in language like a wail of despair. "I left the bench," said this eminent man and patriot, "perfectly convinced that under a system so defective it would not obtain the energy, weight and dignity which was essential to its affording due support to the national government; nor acquire the public confidence and respect which, as the last resort of the justice of the nation, it should possess. Hence I am induced to doubt both the propriety and expediency of my returning to the bench under the present system. Independently of these considerations, the state of my health removes every doubt." This letter was written January 2, 1801, and on the twentieth of the same month Marshall was nominated by President Adams and unanimously confirmed. Concerning this appointment, the youngest son of Marshall, in a letter which was not published until recently, relates that in 1825 he visited Mr. Adams at Quincy. What occurred is very characteristic of the second President. "He gave me," says Edward C. Marshall," a most cordial reception, and, grasping my hands, told me that his gift of Mr. John Marshall to the people of the United States was the proudest act of his life." The son adds this interesting particular: "Some years after this my father told me that the appointment was a great surprise to him, but afforded him the highest gratification, as, with his tastes, he pre

1 Carson, Hist. Sup. Court, p. 191.

ferred to be Chief Justice to being President." And so, with the century then just opened, John Marshall, February 4, 1801, took his seat for the first time as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and held the place until his death, July 6, 1835.

When Marshall became Chief Justice the American Union had sixteen States-a territory of 900,000 square miles, with a population, in round numbers, of 5,000,000

far less than the present population of this Empire State of New York. In the century that has since elapsed, the States, under the stimulus and protection of republican institutions, have increased from sixteen to fortyfive, our territorial area - now facing both of the great oceans for many thousand miles - has more than quadrupled, and the recent national census shows our population to exceed 76,000,000 of people — free, happy, prosperous and united. These in this western world are the marvelous fruits of American institutions - "broadbased upon the people's will," and we owe it all, with the favor of heaven, to the union of these States under the Federal Constitution. This amazing, this unexampled growth-I weigh the word - this growth, unexampled in the history of the world, has been under the Constitution without substantial change in its original plan or essential features, for the amendments adopted soon after the Constitution went into effect and those which were afterwards rendered necessary as the result of the Civil War did not alter the general scope or plan of the Union, although the latter amendments enlarged somewhat the powers of the general government and abridged in cer

1 Magruder's Life of Marshall, 164.

tain specified and most important respects the powers of the States.

It is one of the remarkable phenomena of our history that this national development has been possible under a written constitution without successive revisions and changes having been found needful in order to adapt it to circumstances and conditions so novel and surprising, and which no sagacity could have foreseen or imagined. It belongs to this hour, in part, to inquire into the causes of results at once so extraordinary and so fortunate.

On an occasion like the present the temptation is to give a free reign to our praise, and not to estimate with judicial calmness the language in which the eulogy is pronounced. In the case of Marshall we have the paradox that the most effective eulogy is to give it the force which comes from restraint and under-statement. Contemporary mists have cleared away, revealing more distinctly Marshall's mountainous magnitude-"like Teneriff or Atlas unremoved." We can form to-day a juster estimate of Marshall and of his public services to our profession and to our country, and of his claims on our gratitude and veneration, than was possible for his contemporaries.

On the recommendation of the American Bar Association, the Bar of the United States at the City of Washington and in the different States are celebrating this day in honor of the centennial anniversary of the commencement of the judicial term of Chief Justice Marshall. Its observance was recommended in the annual message of the President. The spontaneous and voluntary character of this homage, on the part of lawyers and laymen throughout the entire country, gives to it its chiefest