Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/196

 Marshall. of duty, as he saw it, nor seduce him into a course that did not commend itself to his judgment or to his conscience.1

167

Alien and Sedition Acts, because, by their violence, they endangered the success of the party which had in charge something too precious to be risked by indulging even the just passion of the moment. But his moder ation in what he regarded as non-essential, was accompanied by an absolutely unyield ing attitude when the vital question was touched. Despite the criticisms of the ex treme Federalists upon his liberality, there was no more rigid believer in the principles which had brought that party into existence than the man who became Chief Justice a century ago.1

In a well known letter to a friend, Marshall says that he entered the Revolution filled with "wild and enthusiastic notions/' Most young men of that period, imbued with such ideas, remained under their control, and, in the course of events, became ardent sympa thizers with the unbridled fanatics of the French Revolution, or, at least, ardent oppo nents of anything like a strong and well or dered central government, and equally zeal ous supporters of State Rights and separatist By political affiliation Marshall was a pro doctrines. Not so John Marshall. With char acteristic modesty, he ascribes the fact that nounced Federalist, but the present genera he did not continue under the dominion of tion _ of lawyers will generally agree, and his "wild and enthusiastic notions" to acci such will be the verdict of the future, that dent and to circumstances, when it really party prejudice never clouded his vision or was due to his own clear and powerful intel distorted his judgment as a jurist. As we lect. In the struggle with England he came read his greatest opinions on questions of to see that the only hope of victory lay in constitutional law our judgments yield read the devotion of the army to a common cause, ily to the vigor of his thought and the in their being soldiers of the Union, and .not weight of his reasons. Indeed, we wonder of separate colonies, and that the peril was at times how the conclusion that is reached in the weakness of the central government. could ever have been challenged by unpreju It seems simple enough to say this now; diced minds. Although he was a Federalist, but this central idea was, as a rule, grasped yet he did not belong to that class of Fed feebly and imperfectly, if at all, by the young eralists of whom there may have been a few, men of that period. Like Hamilton, Mar who distrusted the honesty and intelligence shall worked it out for himself; and, in the of the common people and for that reason letter just referred to, he says that it was were more anxious to establish an oligarchy during the war that he came to regard Amer than to found a Republic. His love of free ica as his country and Congress as his gov dom and his desire to found a government ernment. From that time he was an Amer whereby equal and adequate civil rights ican first, and a Virginian second; and from should be secured to all men by proper con the convictions thus formed in camp and on stitutional guarantees, were as strong and the march he never swerved. Here was the ardent as those men could have desired who principle of his public life; and to the estab were most at variance with his political lishment of that principle his whole career views. He differed with Patrick Henry and and all his great powers were devoted. These Jefferson and other men of that school only convictions made him a Federalist. It was as to the means whereby liberty could be this very devotion to a fundamental princi preserved with the least danger of degener ple which was the source of that temperate ating into anarchy.1 wisdom which caused him to avoid the 1 Honorable Henry Cabot Lodge, United States Sena 1 Honorable William T.indsay, United States Senator mm Kentucky.

tor from Massachusetts. Judge.
 * Honorable Amos M. Thayer, United States Circuit