ernment. Congress approved; and in the hall of the House of Representatives impressive national ceremonies were held, the account of which is given the first place in these volumes. The next place is appropriately assigned to the proceedings in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Marshall's native State. The other observances are arranged in the order of the nine Federal Judicial Circuits, commencing with the State of Maine in the First Circuit.

In addition to the addresses on Marshall Day, the eulogies of Mr. Binney and Justice Story delivered in 1835 soon after the death of the Chief Justice; the address of Mr. Phelps before the American Bar Association at its annual meeting in 1879; of Chief Justice Waite and the oration of Mr. Rawle in 1884 at the unveiling of the statue of Marshall in the Capitol grounds in Washington, have been included. These productions are famous, have long been justly regarded as classic, and are somewhat rare or inaccessible. They round out and complete the plan and purpose, and give a distinctly added value to the present publication.

III.

The influence of the universal celebration of the day will not cease with the occasion, but will be wide and lasting. It has taught the people at large what before was chiefly known to lawyers and special students of our

history, and to these often imperfectly, that to Marshall more than to any other person is due the establishment of the principle of nationality in the Constitution of our country. This principle has profoundly affected our national life. It has determined our destiny. It has made us a Nation in fact as well as in name, a power and not a mere painted semblance. It held the Nation intact against the heresies of nullification and secession. It received its complete, final and now unquestioned triumph. with the overthrow of the Confederacy, whose forces, as has been said, surrendered not more truly to Grant in the field than to Marshall's great judgments expounding the Constitution. Marshall's career has been revealed in a wider light to the whole country; and the value and influence of his work are felt more distinctly, more impressively than ever before.

Our reverence and gratitude are consciously enhanced when it is seen that his decisions as to the scope of the national authority were opposed by powerful parties and interests. Many lawyers and statesmen differed from Marshall at the time. Moreover, the questions were novel and so closely balanced that they not only might have been determined the other way, but it is certain that they would have been determined the other way if their decision had fallen to judges of the strict construction school. Next to Marshall's judicial genius the most conspicuous feature in his character is his placid and undaunted courage. No weak judge, no ordinary judge,

would have faced unmoved, as Marshall did, the active hostilities which he had to encounter. He knew no fear. He heeded no clamor. He kept on in the orbit of his duty, like the planets in their courses, silent and irresistible.

At the date of Marshall's appointment the Republic was" in the gristle" of its infancy and not yet hardened into bone of manhood; it was yet "mewing her mighty youth." He found the National Constitution weak, almost tottering; he supported it by his adamantine judg ments, and he carried it with his strength and courage through the dangers that encompassed it.

The flexibility of the Constitution, arising out of the general language in which its powers and prohibitions are expressed, was the means of perfecting and probably of saving it. Marshall's long judicial reign, contemporary with the official terms of four Chief Justices of England, four Lord Chancellors, and the administration of six American Presidents, made possible the gradual development of the Constitution under his master mind by judicial decisions, point by point, bearing in this respect no slight analogy to the development of the common law, and giving as a result a system far wiser and better (because based upon experience and necessity) than any system which it would have been possible for the mind of man to have formulated in advance. And thus it has happened that Marshall's imprint is imperishably left upon all of the great and essential features of the Constitution.

IV.

The proceedings here published exhibit in a striking light the unanimity of opinion in every part of the country (without a note of dissent in any quarter or from any party) as to the controlling influence and effect of Marshall's decisions in moulding the Constitution into the form, substantially, in which, aside from the recent amendments, we have it to-day. It is true that after the accession of his able successor and other changes in the personnel of the bench, there was in some respects, not fundamental, a slight reaction against the extreme centripetal tendency of Marshall's doctrines-a slight recession from Marshall's high-water line of nationality; but that was all. None of his great Constitutional decisions as to the rightful authority of the National Government was overruled; and the powers, limitations and prohibitions of the Constitution, as Marshall's judgments defined and construed them, remained, and they remain to the present day, not only untouched, but no longer questioned.

The principle of nationality has not yet, as I think, reached its limit or culmination; and I venture to predict that by natural evolution, by judicial development and constitutional amendment arising out of our experience, necessities and changing conditions, the next Marshall Day centennial will witness the powers of the National Government extended to objects and purposes not now within its scope,- at least, its recognized scope.

To the thoughtful reader, amongst the most interesting features of the celebration is the estimation in which Marshall is held in the parts of the Union that clung longest to the doctrine of States' Rights and strict construction, and that made these the legal justification of the Civil War. The appreciation of Marshall is nowhere more hearty and unreserved than in the addresses delivered in those States on Marshall Day. This celebration also shows that the results of the Civil War are everywhere loyally accepted, and that all sections and all parties rejoice in a re-united country; and therefore we are not sorry to hear, in one or two of the addresses, a soldier or a judge of the Confederacy heave a natural sigh or utter a tender lament over the "Lost Cause."

Marshall in a famous opinion earnestly declared that the union of the States under the Constitution was intended by its framers to be perpetual. And surely the spontaneous and universal honors which were rendered to Marshall throughout the entire country more than sixty-five years after he had closed his earthly career afford the strongest assurance possible that the Republic, enthroned in the heart and affection of its people, is destined to endure throughout a future as boundless as our hopes.

V.

In unfolding by successive judgments the powers of the General Government under the Constitution, Marshall was thereby rendering also a closely related and scarcely