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exceptecl from that provision which ex pressly extends the judicial power of the Union to all cases arising under the Consti tution and laws? . . . "It is most true that this Court will not take jurisdiction if it should not; but it is equally true that it must take jurisdiction if it should. The judiciary cannot, as the legislature may, avoid a measure, because it approaches the confines of the Constitution. We cannot pass it by because it is doubtful. With what ever doubts, with whatever difficulties a case may be attended we must decide it if it be brought before us. ' We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution. Questions may occur which we would gladly avoid, but we cannot avoid them. All we can do is to ex ercise our best judgment and conscientiously to perform our duty. In doing this, on the present occasion, we find this tribunal in vested with appellate jurisdiction in all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. We find no exception to this grant and we cannot insert one." What intellectual^ strength, what far-see ing statesmanship, what superb moral cour age are here displayed! Every mind as sented to his logic, every heart was thrilled by his intrepidity, and every eye was trans fixed by the white light of judicial rectitude which shone in every sentence. The effect was decisive. The result has been acquiesced in by the country since that time without a murmur. The jurisdiction of the Court had at last been secured, vindicated and sus tained. Upon these cases, as upon pillars of enduring strength, will forever rest the supremacy of the Supreme Court.1 MARTIN v. HUNTER'S LESSEE. The heated agitation of the time, the vio lent opposition, and even open rebellion. 1 Professor Hampton L. Carson, of the L,aw School of the University of Pennsylvania.

which the work oJ the Court aroused, cannot be put in cold and, formal propositions or stated in a syllabus. For instance, in the case before mentioned of Martin i'. Hunter's Lessee, a mandate had issued from the United States Supreme Court requiring the Court of Appeals of Virginia to carry a judg ment of the Federal Court into effect. Vir ginia was Marshall's native State, where he was personally much beloved, but its highest court took a rebellious tone at being thus ordered to carry out a mandate of the Fed eral Court. "The Court is unanimously of opinion," gravely wrote the Virginia Court, "that the appellate power of the Supreme Court of the United States does not extend to this Court under a sound construction of the Constitution of the United States: that so much of the twenty-fifth section of the act of Congress to establish judicial courts of the United States as extends the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to this Court is not in pursuance of the Constitution of the United States; that the writ of error in this cause was improvidently allowed un der the authority of that act; that the pro ceedings thereon in the Supreme Court were coram non fndice in relation to this Court, and that obedience to its mandate be declined by the Court." Martin then took a further writ of error to review this later defiant judg ment, and the Supreme Court then reviewed the whole law of Federal jurisdiction in ap peals from and writs of error to State courts in an opinion as clear and unanswerable as was perhaps ever rendered by any Court. The opinion was handed- down by Story, but no one who reads it, and who knows the terse and simple style and cogent logic of John Marshall, will ever doubt that Marshall wrote every sentence of the opinion. Henry Adams says in his history that it was a great triumph of Marshall to thus induce Story, who had been appointed by Madison as a Republican, to render this conclusive and farreaching opinion confirmatory of Federal jurisdiction.1 1 Honorable Isaac N. Phillips.