Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/356

346 letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional." When Marshall put aside his robes of office in 1835, the Constitution had been securely anchored in its station as the supreme law of the land and the Washington government, chiefly through his masterly legal skill, had been brought to a dominating place in the national life.

These three decades covered, in the second place, an era of territorial expansion, the successive steps of which have been traced in another lecture.

In the third place the relations between the United States and European powers were placed on a better footing during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The withdrawal of France and Spain from contiguous territory removed a source of possible danger. The war with England (1812–1815) cleared the international atmosphere of some noxious features, and in the era of better feeling which followed its conclusion came the virtual neutralization of the Great Lakes—a stroke of great and statesmanlike prudence. Within a few years came the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine with its unfaltering enunciation of American diplomatic policy in relation to the lands of the New Hemisphere. In the twenty years intervening between 1803 and 1823 the Republic has cleared her boundaries to the south, removed a possible menace from her boundaries to the north, and frankly made known the fundamentals of her future policy as respects all surrounding lands.