Federalist though he was, he bore himself with pure republican simplicity in those early days in the life of the republic - so early that its officers had not yet learned to divest themselves of the pomps of sovereignty. It was soon after he became Chief Justice that Mr. Jefferson, who represented another school of politics, is said to have quietly ridden to the capitol, hitched his horse, and walked to the place where he took the oath and assumed the Presidency. Many traditions have come down to us of the simple, almost homely, private life and character of this great man who moulded the Constitution to his views, and did more than any man to fix the status of the general government in relation to its parts. Neglect him not, young men, who find your high exemplars along the lines of all the great and good, when you come to learn the lesson that the grace of greatness is simplicity and truth.

The Constitution of the United States, framed with so much of deliberation, made necessary by the failure of the Articles of Confederation to serve the purpose of a government which had passed from the struggle for freedom into the accomplishment of peace -- this Constitution was not a scheme worked out of the imaginations of its founders. Some of you may remember "the fundamental Constitutions of Carolina," written for the province of North Carolina by John Locke, the philosopher, and what a failure it was; but this Constitution was an evolution; it was the aftermath of an experiment with the first fruits of independent statehood, the result of a far-seeing judgment based upon the experience of the workings of all free governments which had gone before in the ages.

There was the thousand-year growth of the unwritten

Constitution of England, through which the spirit of liberty had struggled, maintaining itself over the heads of kings. There were the experiments and failures of the earlier republics in the East. There was the great system of the universe, the central sun, the revolving constellations, in their perpetual order. There were the unfailing principles of natural justice and personal liberty bought with a price and never to be yielded. There were the rights of sovereign, independent States, supposed to be retained; the portions of sovereignty granted, the checks and balances to hold in place, to make of many one, and yet to keep each in its sphere. Unlike ordinary laws which might be changed according to necessity or expediency by each succeeding legislature, it was the framing of a fundamental charter, not to be altered except upon consideration and by the States who made it. This work then had been done; the Constitution had been adopted and ratified; the machinery of government under it had been set in motion; the never-to-be-finished task of applying its principles to the facts of new and ever-arising questions had been begun.

In the eleven years which had preceded the appointment of John Marshall to be Chief Justice, but few great principles had been settled. The eminent jurists and publicists who had essayed the task had well nigh given it up. The office of Chief Justice had four times become vacant, and, while filled, its occupants had held other positions of honor and responsibility under the government. The first Chief Justice, John Jay, had, during his term of six years, spent fourteen months as envoy to England, and, without returning to his seat upon the bench, resigned to become Governor of New York. John Rutledge, of South Carolina, had been appointed, and had

held the office from July, 1795, until the end of the next session of the Senate, his nomination not having been confirmed. William Cushing, of Massachusetts, had been appointed and had declined, and Oliver Ellsworth, who succeeded Rutledge in March, 1796, had spent a year or more abroad as envoy to France, and then resigned to return to private life, and when it was again offered to the former Chief Justice Jay his despairing declination was in these words: "I left the bench 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."

It was a time when party spirit ran as high as we have ever seen it run in our day. Intense bitterness prevailed. The Constitution had been ratified by the States after, in some instances, protracted discussions; and after its ratification the two parties continued to assert their views with equal ardor upon its construction. John Marshall had been foremost in Virginia in advocating its ratification and in favoring that construction which would make of the Union a strong, consolidated empire. He stood at the head of the Federal party in Virginia; he had been its strongest expounder in the Legislature and in Congress; he was a great politician, using the word politician in its best sense, as well as a great lawyer, and he was Secretary of State under the elder Adams, who, in the closing year of his term, was seeking to strengthen the Federal theory of the Constitution before Jefferson, who was and is and ever will be as long as there is a principle

to contend for, the incarnation of the very opposite ideas of construction, those of the then Republican partyState sovereignty and strict construction.

And so it was that on this day, the 4th of February, 1801, just a century ago, at the first meeting of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, John Marshall, of Virginia, took his seat, the seat from which, for the term of a full generation of living men, he was to write almost every opinion of great importance as Chief Justice of the United States. And now, as we stand upon. the high ground of the new century and look back over the growth and development of the Constitution in its relation to the strength of this government, it is in the mouths of all men to say that the foundations of its power were laid by him.

But I hope you understand that in tracing the character of this great man and his influence upon the construction of the Constitution, one may not be required to subscribe to the political tenets which in certain particulars guided that construction. Bred in a different school of politics, those of us who look to Monticello for the springs of faith may strenuously dissent from the strengthening and consolidating ideas of the Federalists, and the inevitable weakening and final destruction of the sov ereignties of the separate States under a construction which, however embedded now into the jurisprudence of this country, was as bitterly fought as it was fiercely upheld by those who, side by side, had achieved the independence of the colonies. Surely, however, we may admire the intellect, the wisdom, the will, and may we not say the honesty of intention and purity of purpose, of those who worked out such a different conception of the effect which was to be given to the compact embodied in

this fundamental agreement between the States which formed the Federal Government. In this place of free discussion, where the young men and women are led to reason out their own opinions and express their own convictions, we may admire the spirit which inspired, and yet fail in enthusiasm over the results of the inspiration.

It required more than the culture of a trained lawyer, with his huge bundle of precedents, to interpret the Constitution.

The country then, as now, and as it always will be as long as there is love of liberty and boldness of speech, and that proper unrest which looks for betterment, was divided into parties. The debates in the conventions upon the formation of the instrument, and of those States which hesitated at its ratification, were conducted with great ability. The discussions on the hustings were not without rancor. And later, out of the intense acerbity attending upon the change of administration from Adams to Jefferson, no wonder that harsh expressions were used on the one side and on the other concerning the leaders in those political struggles. Jefferson, with Henry and Mason, led in Virginia, and did not hesitate to characterize Marshall's arguments, and afterwards his judicial opinions, as crafty sophistries, ruinous to the public and republican institutions.

How well we know that, although the Constitution was adopted and ratified and at once amended to emphasize the sovereignty of the State and the personal rights of the citizens, still the opposing parties held to their opinions, and for seventy years, with varying fortunes, the discussions went on through two generations of men and statesmen. The conflict was irreconcilable; compromises were made and broken, decisions were re