COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. In Massachusetts the following members of the bar were selected by the National Committee of the American Bar Association to act as a general committee of arrangements for the celebration of Marshall Day: Marquis F. Dickinson, chairman; James Barr Ames, Patrick A. Collins, Lewis S. Dabney, Henry S. Dewey, Frederick P. Fish, John C. Gray, Charles S. Hamlin, Alfred Hemenway, Robert M. Morse, and Moorfield Storey.' It was found that plans had already been made at Harvard University for the delivery of an address before the Harvard Law School on the character and services of Chief Justice Marshall, by Professor James Bradley Thayer of that school. The committee availed itself of 1 The relation here given of the proceedings in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in commemoration of John Marshall is, by permission of the editor, generously accorded, taken from a volume (pages xvii,120) carefully edited, beautifully printed and embellished, bearing the following title: "John Marshall: The Tribute of Massachusetts, being the addresses delivered at Boston and Cambridge, February 4, 1901, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of his elevation to the bench as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Edited by Marquis F. Dickinson, Esq., of the Boston Bar." Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1901. The volume is illustrated by portraits of John Marshall, 1831 (photogravure from the original portrait by Henry Inman), John Marshall, 1808 (from a crayon by Saint-Mémin), Hosea Morrill Knowlton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Pickering Walcott, James Bradley Thayer, John Chipman Gray, Henry St. George Tucker, Richard Olney. ร the opportunity thus presented to make that address a part of the general programme of the day. This programme included appropriate ceremonies in the Supreme Judicial Court at Boston in the morning, the address of Professor Thayer in Sanders Theatre at Cambridge in the afternoon, and a dinner at the new Algonquin Club in Boston, under the auspices of the Bar Association of the City of Boston, in the evening. The following gentlemen, officers of the Boston Bar Association, were appointed by that body to have charge of the arrangements for the dinner: Charles P. Greenough, vice-president; William F. Wharton, secretary; William S. Hall, treasurer; Charles B. Southard, representing the executive committee. Inasmuch as the appointment of John Marshall of Virginia was made by President John Adams of Massachusetts, it was thought by the committee to be appropriate that the union of the two States in so auspicious an event should be recognized at the proposed celebration by inviting some distinguished member of the bar of Virginia to be the special guest of the day. Accordingly, Professor Henry St. George Tucker, Dean of the Law School of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, was invited, and honored the occasion by his presence. The exercises in the Supreme Judicial Court were brief but deeply impressive. The court room proved entirely inadequate for the accommodation of those seeking admittance. Hundreds turned reluctantly away from its doors. The bar was thronged by many of its best known members, together with a few distinguished citizens not of the legal profession, especially invited to be present. The justices of the Superior and Municipal Courts, led by their respective Chief Justices, Mason and Parmenter, were in attendance. At ten o'clock the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court came in, led by his Honor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice, and accompanied by his Excellency W. Murray Crane, Governor of the Commonwealth, who occupied a place upon the bench at the right of the Chief Justice. All remained standing while proclamation was made by the crier, according to the ancient formula used in opening the courts of Massachusetts. The address to the court by Attorney-General Knowlton, representing the members of the bar, and the response by Chief Justice Holmes followed, after which the court adjourned. The address of Professor Thayer was delivered in Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, at four o'clock P. M. The severest snow storm of the season had set in before midday, but this did not prevent the attendance of a very large audience, comprising the Faculty and students of the Harvard Law School, heads of other departments in the University, judges and members of the bar from different sections of the Commonwealth. As President Eliot was absent from the country, the speaker was introduced by Dr. Henry Pickering Walcott, Acting President of the University. Two hundred and twenty-five persons sat down at the dinner given in the evening under the auspices of the Bar Association of the City of Boston, in the banquet hall of the New Algonquin Club. The size of the room so closely limited the number who could be accommodated that a large number of the members of the Bar were necessarily excluded from attendance upon the dinner. Professor John Chipman Gray, of the Harvard Law School, President of the Bar Association of the City of Boston, presided, and introduced the speakers of the evening, who were Professor Tucker of Virginia and Richard Olney of Massachusetts. Their addresses closed the exercises of the day. PROCEEDINGS IN THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Address of Attorney-General Knowlton. Upon this morning, a century ago, the Supreme Court of the United States assembled for the first time in the city of Washington. The term city was one of courtesy rather than of description; for it was a place of swamps and woods, a city without inhabitants, a town without houses. Even Pennsylvania Avenue, to-day the most distinctly national, if not the most historic, street in America, was a morass covered with underbrush, impassable to horse or foot, without visible demarkation, a tangled wilderness. There was only the dream of a capital. But in that city and upon the very eminence where it met this day one hundred years ago, the court has since always been held, though more than once within sound, even within the very sight, of the guns of the enemies of the Republic. It happened, moreover, that on this same day, and in this same place, the commission of a new Chief Justice was read; and the term was presided over for the first time by one who was destined, for more than a third of the century that has since intervened, to direct and control the policy of the court, and to establish the place which it has since maintained, not only as one of the three great and co-ordinate departments of the Government of the Republic, but also as the most august and powerful tribunal in the civilized world. This new Chief Justice was John Marshall of Virginia. The bar of the United States has deemed these two auspicious events of sufficient moment to deserve the attention of the courts upon the occasion of this anniversary. Occurring, by one of those signal coincidences. with which history is replete, upon the first judicial day of the nineteenth century, they also marked the birth and beginning, if not the creation and the cause, of the national grandeur which has characterized that century. Indeed, so closely have we come to trace cause and effect between the judgments of that court and the growth of the nation, that to-day, even upon this threshold of another century, when, as then, men are at issue upon a momentous question relating to the future policy of the United States, the voice of clamor is hushed, and Congress waits until this same august tribunal pronounces the decree which shall bind or expand, as the case may be, the wings of National ambition. Up to that time the importance of the Supreme Court in the scheme of the Federal Government had scarcely been appreciated. In the original proposals for the erection of a capitol, prepared, I believe, under the direction of George Washington himself, no provision was made. for the accommodation of the court. The founders of the nation had inherited the traditions of the mother country, where, owing to the absolute power of Parliament, the function of the judiciary was limited to the settlement of private disputes, its only relation to the Government being on the criminal side. The idea of enforcement of constitutional limitations by the judiciary upon the other departments of the Government and upon the States, axiomatic as such doctrines appear to us, was |