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180 pulse> and hence results indecision and an expression of doubt. . . . This gentleman> when aroused, has strong reasoning powers, they are indeed ahnost un- equalled." ^ Fisher Ames could not pardon Marshall's disapproval of the Alien and Sedition laws and wrote : "Excuses may palliate; future zeal in the cause may partially atone; but his character is done for. . . . False Federalists or such as act wrong from false fears should be dealt hardly with, if I were Jupiter Tonans/' On the other hand, Jeremiah Smith had written that he placed "great confidence in Marshall as a true patriot and a discerning man/' * Washington had written that he had "a high opinion of General Mar- shall's honor, prudence and judgment"; and since it was due to his special request that Marshall became a candidate for Congress and was thus brought into close contact with President Adams, it may justly be said that it was primarily to Washington that the country owed its great Chief Justice.^

But, though some of his contemporaries were not enthusiastic in their estimation of Marshall as a statesman, he was ranked as a lawyer among the three or four leaders of the Virginia Bar. Of these leaders, wrote a fellow member of the Bar in 1796,

» King, III. letter of Sedgwick to King, May 11. 1800; W(yrks of Fisher Ames, I. letter of Dec. 18. 1798, to Christopher Gore; see also letter of Cabot to King, April 26. 1799: "Marshall ought not to be attacked in the newspapers nor too severely condemned anywhere, because Marshall has not yet learned his whole lesson, but has a mind and disposition which can hardly fail to make him presently an accomplished political scholar and a very useful man. Some allowance too, should be made for the influence of the atmosphere of Virginia, which doubtless makes everyone who breathes it visionary and, upon the subject of free government, incredibly credulous ; but it is certain that Marshall at Philadelphia would become a most powerful auxiliary to the cause of order and good government, and therefore we ought not to diminish his fame, which would ultimately be a loss to ourselves."

• Life of Jeremiah Smith (1846), by John H. Morison. letter of June «7, 1798; Washington, XII, letter to Edward Carrington, Oct. 9, 1796.

'See especially interesting account of Washington's conference with Marshall and Bushrod Washington, in 1798, in Autobiography of Martin Van Buren in Amer, Hist. Ass. Rep. (1918), II.