Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan freed from the blight of slavery Jackson preserved that Nation, and these three constitute a trinity, whose monuments are as one.

Later on the theory for which Jefferson contended led to a conflict wherein men, who, as children, nursed the same mother's breast; who repeated the same prayer at her knee; who were baptized at the same font and confirmed at the same chancel, were arrayed against each other, and ere it was ended, sorrow and grief were written on the glad brow of childhood; the heart and hope of youth were chilled; the life current of early manhood reddened an hundred battle fields; the step of the grayhaired father and mother was quickened on its pace to the grave, and the bridal wreath was turned into widow's weeds in the honeymoon of wedlock. The conflict ended, and that for which Marshall contended triumphed, and that for which Jefferson contended became the "lost cause."

Justice Story, in 1835, in an address before the Suffolk Bar, in speaking of Marshall, says: "He who has been enabled by the force of his talents and the example of his virtues to identify his own character with the solid interests and happiness of his country; he who has lived long enough to stamp the impressions of his own mind upon the age, and has left on record lessons of wisdom for the study and improvement of all posterity,- he, I say, has attained all that a truly good man aims at, and all that a truly great man should aspire to. He has erected a monument to his memory in the hearts of men. Their gratitude will perpetually, though it may be silently, breathe forth his praises; and the voluntary homage paid to his name will speak a language more intelligible and more universal than any epitaph inscribed on Parian marble, or any image wrought out by the cunning

hands of sculpture. . . . Even if the Constitution of his country should perish, his glorious judgments will still remain to instruct mankind, until liberty shall cease to be a blessing, and the science of jurisprudence shall vanish from the catalogue of human pursuits."

One hundred years ago to-day Marshall took the oath of office as Chief Justice of the United States, and his seat on the bench of the Supreme Court. I have heard men express wonder as to where and when he acquired the wonderful knowledge of the law which subsequent events showed him to possess. The question is easily answered. He learned it largely as all great judges have learned it, from the lawyers appearing before them. It was taught him by Dallas, Tilghman, McKean, Ingersoll, Lewis, Mason, Lee, Minor, Key, Jones, Swann, Simms, Harper, Breckenridge, Martin, Rodney, Hare, Rawle, Clay, Bradley, Broom, Youngs, Adams, Binney, Winder, Pinkney, Dexter, Sedgwick, Webster, Wheaton, Ogden, Sergeant, Wirt, Wickliffe, Berrien, Taney, Peters, Grundy, Ewing, Vinton, Bibb, Frelinghuysen, and a score of others.

He knew that it was not the knowledge of the law which he acquired before he went on the Bench that would make him a great judge. He knew that in a judicial position if he acquired a knowledge of the law at all it had to be acquired from the lawyers. It does not appear that he ever left the Bench during the argument of a cause, and let it proceed while he took his lunch; nor does it appear that during the argument of a cause he spent his time reading his correspondence, or the proof sheets of an opinion in another case; nor does it appear he went to sleep on the Bench when a case was being argued. Story, who was on the Bench with him, says: "He was solicitous to hear arguments and

reluctant to decide causes without them. No matter whether the subject was new or old, familiar to his thoughts or remote from them, buried under a mass of obsolete learning or developed for the first time yesterday whatever its nature, he courted argument, nay, he demanded it." It was this, and not the gown and commission, that made him a great judge. When he presided over the court, you never saw a smile of satisfaction pass over his face, or that of his associates, when it was announced the cause would be submitted without argument, nor would you hear a sigh of relief passing upward carrying the words: "Thank God for that."

Moses lies in a lonely grave by Nebo's mountain, in a vale in the land of Moab. After the centuries which have passed since his death, the law which he brought from Sinai's mount has stood the test of time, and is to-day the woof and warp of the morality of the civilized world. He was at the birth of the ten commandments, as Marshall was at the birth of constitutional law. The law Moses found for the children of Israel has withstood the centuries of the past and will withstand the centuries to come. That which Marshall found has survived a century, and will so continue as long as constitutional government shall exist, and the winds that pass over Beth-peor's hills, as they in their course pass over the nation made by Marshall, will chant a requiem to the greatest jurist of any age or any clime.

Address of U. M. Rose.

I am not here to pronounce a eulogy on John Marshall; but the language that would express the most sober and discriminating estimate of his character might easily be mistaken for eulogy. There is not a man living that

could add anything to his fame, or that could pluck a single leaf from the chaplet of laurel with which he was crowned by public acclamation long ago. Though younger in years, he was contemporaneous with that remarkable galaxy of men that sat around the cradle of American liberty; men such as Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, and a score of others that might be mentioned, all men of extraordinary ability, all animated by the same devotion to the cause of their country, which was at the same time the cause of humanity. Never since the age of Pericles had a country so small in population produced so many men in the same generation of such splendid endowments. Born with a keen thirst for knowledge, and impelled by an ardent emulation to profit by their illustrious example, John Marshall had the advantage of knowing personally in their declining years all of these great fathers of the Republic, of observing their lives, and storing in his memory words of wisdom which in after days served him for guidance and for inspiration; so that his whole life became a sort of continuation of their traditions and of their manly virtues.

The name of Marshall is as inseparably connected with the Constitution of the United States as that of Hamilton or Madison or of any one else that helped to frame that instrument. If others conceived the form of government which it was to ordain, it was Marshall that, more than any other one man, gave precision to its meaning, and translated it from a seeming abstraction into a practical force, suited to the varied exigencies of national life. The value of the Constitution and of the interpretation which it has received are both attested by the fact that under their combined influence we have increased in wealth, in population and in intelligence in a ratio of which history has

never recorded a kindred example. If we have failed in some things, and if, considering our opportunities, we are neither as good nor as wise as we ought to be, the fault has not been with the Constitution, nor with the decisions of Marshall, but with ourselves. We have had the largest measure of personal freedom. We have had the selection of our own rulers; so that we cannot lay any serious miscarriage to the form of our government. It is imperfect, as all things that we know are imperfect; but it is extremely doubtful whether anything better could be devised. Judging from the result of experiments that have been made in other countries we have abundant reason to be content with the instrument itself, and with the interpretation of the powers of the government by the great Chief Justice and his colleagues to whom this grave and important duty was intrusted; reflecting that there is no government that by its own unaided action. will of itself work out satisfactory results. A popular government must always reflect the follies and demerits of those by whom it is controlled, as well as their virtues; and eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but it is the price of almost everything else that is worth having.

Mr. Gladstone spoke of the American Constitution as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." This saying has been made the subject of rash and unmerited criticism, as if it had been intended to convey the idea that the Constitution owed nothing to pre-existing institutions, to the lessons of history, or to the labors of many illustrious men in the science of government. It is needless to say that if the framers of that instrument had discarded such obvious means of enlightenment their work would have