pointment, he said: "I left the bench perfectly convinced that under a system so defective it could not attain the energy, weight and dignity which were essential to its affording due support to the National Government."

It is said in Grecian mythology that all who consulted the oracle of Trophonius came away melancholy and depressed. Mr. Randolph spoke of the court as "the cave of Trophonius." Mr. Jefferson, long after his career as President, reflecting the sentiment of hostility towards the court which he always entertained, said: "The judiciary of the United States is a subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederate fabric."

Two years after Chief Justice Marshall's death an eminent lawyer, reviewing his life and services, said of the court: "How transcendent in power and dignity is this tribunal! It is the concentrated force of the whole Republic. There is nothing on earth like it. Its arms embrace the extremities of this vast empire; its voice is heard and obeyed in its remotest parts. Proud, powerful and sovereign States submit to its decrees, and the assembled representatives of sixteen millions of freemen may stand rebuked before it."

The years which have since passed have but confirmed of the court what was then said, and we cannot refrain from expressing the thought that this eloquent and truthful characterization is chiefly attributable to the services, talent, character and influence of Chief Justice Marshall. As a tribute to his memory, the most illustrious of all the great Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, I submit to your Honors a motion to adjourn for this day the several courts over which you preside.

Response of Judge Amos M. Thayer, on behalf of the

Court.

The members of this court share fully in those feelings of admiration and reverence for Chief Justice Marshall which have prompted the members of the legal profession throughout the United States to observe the one hundredth anniversary of his accession to the Supreme Bench with appropriate ceremonies.

The great Chief Justice has been dead for more than sixty-five years. The passions and prejudices evoked by heated political controversies which affected the judgment of some men during a portion of his active career, and possibly led to some false estimates of the man and his achievements, have now subsided. The great judicial and political structure, of which Chief Justice Marshall was one of the principal architects, is now in a state of completion. The Constitution of our country, as he understood and construed it, has been on trial for more than a century and has withstood the test of time, proving itself to be a shield against wrong and oppression, and, as he labored to make it, a source of national power fully adequate to meet all emergencies. The years that have elapsed since Marshall's death have given increased weight to all of his judicial utterances, and owing to our recent acquisition of new territory in a remote quarter of the globe, peopled by strange races, the lawyers and statesmen of our day are studying his decisions on constitutional questions with renewed interest, to discover, if they may, some casual thought or expression, hitherto unnoticed, to aid in the solution of some of the vexed problems which now confront us.

Looking backward from our present vantage ground to the conditions that existed one hundred years ago, all

unprejudiced minds must concede that the appointment of Chief Justice Marshall to the Supreme Bench was one of those historic events whose influence on the national welfare was potent for good during the century that has just ended, and will remain potent so long as our present form of government is maintained. His appointment to office may have changed in a measure the scope and character of the organic act from which the United States as a nation derives its existence. So great were the prejudices that had been excited against the Federal Constitution, so little had been done prior to Marshall's accession to the Supreme Bench to develop its latent possibilities and to demonstrate its wholesome effect on the public welfare, and so loth were some of the States to relinquish any of their sovereign powers, that it is at least possible that if many another man of national prominence had been appointed in his place and stead, the Constitution might have been rendered valueless as a source of national power, or even wrecked on the shoals of ignorance, prejudice and disunion during the second decade of its existence. We should be profoundly grateful to President Adams that with a rare foresight, at a critical period of our history when the Constitution was in peril, he selected for the office of Chief Justice a lawyer and a statesman, who of all men of his generation was best qualified to pacify the public mind and inspire confidence in the organic act, without relinquishing by construction a single national power thereby conferred.

Chief Justice Marshall had learned as a soldier in the Continental Army, during the days of the Revolution, the weakness and the futility of a mere compact between sovereign States whose obligations each State was privileged to dispute or to dissolve at its pleasure. He had

defended the Constitution on the floor of the Virginia Convention and before excited audiences against the assaults of such men as Patrick Henry, with an ability which was surpassed only by that of Hamilton and Madison. He had studied every line and paragraph of the organic act and had a theory of its operation and a prophetic vision of its effect on the national welfare which was the result of his own reflections and his intimate relations with such men as Washington, Hamilton and Madison. Moreover, as a statesman, Marshall possessed constructive ability of the highest order.

After the great Chief Justice took his seat on the Supreme Bench, that tribunal ceased to speak in timid, doubtful or hesitating tones upon any of the great questions relating to the powers of the General Government that were discussed at the Bar in quick succession during the early years of the last century after the anti-Federalists had gained the ascendency. The Chief Justice usually formulated the opinions of the court on such subjects, speaking always ex cathedra, as one who had "sounded the depth and shallows of every argument," and as one who, if not a member of the convention which had framed the Constitution, was nevertheless familiar with the thoughts and purposes of the great statesmen who had conceived it. For clearness of vision, breadth of view and power of logic, the decisions of Chief Justice Marshall relating to the Federal Constitution have never been excelled, and rarely, if ever, equaled. Under his masterful influence the Constitution of our country grew for more than a generation, along well-defined lines, into those fair proportions of symmetry and strength which the American people have long since learned to reverence and admire.

No class of men understand so well as lawyers the extent to which legislative enactments, whether organic or otherwise, are affected by judicial interpretation. Statutes may be developed by a liberal construction, or emasculated by a narrow, strict and unfriendly interpretation. Bad laws usually lose a part of their power to do harm when they have undergone judicial scrutiny, and wise measures of legislation are frequently amplified and improved by the well-directed efforts of the Bar and Bench. Of the Federal Constitution as now understood, it may be said truthfully that it owes as much to the influence and genius of John Marshall as to the statesmanship of James Madison, who is supposed by some to have drafted it. Marshall was in thorough sympathy with those statesmen whose will had been most potent in framing the Constitution. He believed with them that "governments destitute of energy will ever produce anarchy;" that the new Nation should be armed with power to levy and collect its own taxes and imposts by its own officers; that it should be able to enforce its own laws by direct action on the individual; that it should have power to raise and maintain such military and naval forces as might be necessary to maintain peace at home and to prevent invasion from abroad; and that it should have sole authority to deal with other countries and with all subjects of national and international concern. In short, Marshall was in full accord with that class of statesmen who aimed to secure for the new government a proper degree of respect, both at home and abroad, and who desired to place it on a plane of entire equality with the other civilized nations of the earth as respects its power to maintain its own existence and to discharge functions that are purely national. Actuated by these beliefs and by