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 JOHN MARSHALL, 
 
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EXERCISES AT THE CEREMONY 
 
 UNVEILING THE STATUE 
 
 JOHN MARSHALL, 
 
 Chief Justice of the United States, 
 
 IX FRONT OF 
 
 The Capitol, Washington, 
 
 May 10, 1884. 
 
 With the Address of Mr. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE, and the 
 Oration of WILLIAM HENRY RAWLE, Esq., LL.D. 
 
 WITH THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PHILADELPHIA BAR RELATING 
 TO THE MONUMENT TO CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 1884. 
 
AN ACT to authorize the ered;ion of a 
 statue of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 Be it ena^ed by the Senate mid House 
 of Representatives of the United States of 
 America in Congress assembled, That the 
 President of the Senate and the Speaker 
 of the House of Representatives do ap- 
 point a joint committee of three Senators ' 
 and three Representatives, with authority 
 to contradt for and ered; a statue to the 
 memory of Chief Justice John Marshall, 
 formerly of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States; that said statue shall be 
 placed in a suitable public reservation, to 
 be designated by said joint committee, in 
 the city of Washington ; and for said pur- 
 pose the sum of twenty thousand dollars, 
 or so much thereof as may be necessary, is 
 hereby appropriated out of any money in 
 the Treasury not otherwise appropriated. 
 
 Approved March lo, 1882. 
 
CEREMONIES 
 
 IN HONOR OF 
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL, 
 
 In pursuance of the foregoing adl of 
 Congress, the Joint Committee on the 
 Library, in connection with the trustees of 
 the Marshall Memorial Fund, contracted 
 with and have received from the artist, W. 
 W. Story, a bronze statue of John Mar- 
 shall, late Chief Justice of the United 
 States. 
 
 It has been placed on the site selected, 
 near the 'west front of the Capitol. 
 
 In accordance with separate resolutions 
 of the two houses, the statue was, on the 
 loth of May, 1884, unveiled in th€ presence 
 of both houses of Congress, the chief offi- 
 cers of the various Departments of the 
 
6 Statue of Chief justice Marshall. 
 
 Government, the descendants of Chief 
 Justice Marshall, and many citizens, with 
 appropriate ceremonies, as follows: 
 
 Order of exercises at the unveiling of the 
 statue of yohn Marshall, late Chief 
 yustice of the United States. 
 
 On Saturday, May io, 1884. 
 
 Music. 
 
 Mariife Band. 
 
 Prayer ----- J^ev. Dr. Armstrong. 
 
 Music. 
 Address ------- The Chief yustice. 
 
 Music. 
 Oration - - William Henry Rawle, Esq. 
 
 Music. 
 
 Benediction. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 7 
 
 By diredion of the Joint Committee on 
 the Library, Hon. John Sherman, chair- 
 man, introduced the Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States as 
 presiding officer. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. J. G. Armstrong, pastor of 
 the Monumental Church, Richmond, Va., 
 then deHvered the following prayer: 
 
 O God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! 
 We adore Thee as the Father of all man- 
 kind, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, the 
 centre and bond of the great brotherhood 
 of man, in whom there is neithej Jew nor 
 Greek. We adore Thee as the answerer 
 of prayer, who boldest in Thy grasp all the 
 physical, intelled;ual, political, and moral 
 forces of the world, and canst adjust and 
 diredt them to intelligent and beneficent 
 ends. In this faith we pray to-day for 
 Thy blessing upon our nation in all her 
 governmental departments. Diredl her 
 
8 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 legislators/in Congress and State legisla- 
 tures, to the enadlment of such laws as 
 shall secure to all the people of the land 
 their full constitutional rights, and as shall 
 be in conformity to that higher law whose 
 seat is the bosom of God, and whose 
 voice the harmony of the world. May her 
 judges, supreme and subordinate, interpret 
 the laws under the lights of stridl integrity 
 and justice. And in the hands of her 
 executives may the laws be administered 
 irrespedtive of party or sedlional interest, 
 without partiality and without hypocrisy. 
 
 And we bless Thy name for all that Thou 
 hast done for our nation. We bless Thee 
 for her great men, for her warriors^ her 
 statesmen, her orators, her poets, and her 
 men of science, come they from whatever 
 quarter — North, South, East, or West — 
 who have been such powerful fadlors in the 
 production of the national charadler and 
 reputation. And especially do we to-day 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 9 
 
 bless Thee for the Hfe of him whose statue 
 is now to be unveiled, whom a nation 
 honors, and whose memory a nation would 
 cherish and perpetuate. May the example 
 of his pure personal and juridic life stimu- 
 late the private citizen and the ermined 
 judge to the faithful performance of duty 
 and the emulation of his great virtues. 
 And may Thy kingdom come and Thy 
 will be done as in heaven so in our land, 
 and so in all the earth, through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with the 
 Father and the Holy Spirit, ever One God, 
 world without end. Amen. 
 
 Hon. Morrison R. Waite, Chief Justice 
 of the United States, spoke as follows : 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE. 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall died in Phila- 
 delphia on the 6th of July, 1835. The next 
 day the bar of that city met and resolved 
 "that it be recommended to the bar of the 
 United States to co-operate in eredting a 
 monument to his memory at some suitable 
 place in the city of Washington." The 
 committee charged with the duty of carry- 
 ing this recommendation into effed; were 
 Mr. Duponceau, Mr. Binney, Mr. Sergeant, 
 Mr. Chauncey, and Mr. J. R. Ingersoll. A 
 few days later the bar of the city of New 
 York appointed Mr. S. P. Staples, Mr. R. 
 M. Blatchford, Mr. Beverley Robinson, Mr. 
 Hugh Maxwell, and Mr. George Griffin to 
 represent them in the work which had thus 
 
1 2 Statue of Chief justice Marshall. 
 
 been inaugurated. Undoubtedly there 
 were similar organizations in other locali- 
 ties, biit the publications of the day, to 
 which access has been had, contain no 
 notice of them. The Philadelphia com- 
 mittee, " desiring to make the subscriptions 
 as extensive as possible, and to avoid in- 
 convenience to those who may be willing 
 to unite with them," expressed the wish 
 "that individual subscriptions should be 
 moderate, and that the required amount 
 may be made up by the number of con- 
 tributions, rather than the magnitude of 
 particular donations, so that the monument 
 may truly be the work of the bar of the 
 United States, and an enduring evidence 
 of their veneration for the memory of the 
 illustrious deceased." Accordingly, in 
 Philadelphia no more than ten dollars was 
 received from any one member, and the 
 committees of other localities were advised 
 of the adoption of this regulation. In this 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 1 3 
 
 way the sum of three thousand dollars 
 was colledted, and then the subscriptions 
 stopped. Not so, however, the work of 
 the Philadelphia committee — or, as I prefer 
 to call them, the Philadelphia trustees — for 
 a few years ago the last survivor of them 
 brought out their package of securities, and 
 it was shown that under their careful and 
 judicious management the <^3,ooo of 1835 
 had grown in 1880 to be almost $20,000. 
 
 At this time it was thought something 
 might be done by the bar alone to carry 
 out, in an appropriate way, the original 
 design; but Congress, in order that the 
 nation might join the bar in honoring the 
 memory of the great man to whom so 
 much was due, added another $20,000 to 
 the lawyers' fund, and to-day Congress as 
 well as the bar has asked you here to wit- 
 ness the unveiling of a monument which 
 has been ered;ed under these circum- 
 stances. 
 
1 4 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 For twenty-four years there sat with the 
 Chief Justice on the bench of the Supreme 
 Court one whose name is largely associ- 
 ated with his own in the judicial history of 
 the times. I need hardly say I refer to 
 Mr. Justice Story. Fortunately a son of 
 his, once a lawyer himself, had won dis- 
 tindlion in the world of art, and so it was 
 specially fit that he should be employed, 
 as he was, to develop in bronze the form 
 of one he had from his earliest childhood 
 been taught to love and to revere. How 
 faithfully and how appropriately he has 
 performed his task you will soon be per- 
 mitted to see. 
 
 But, before this is done, let me say a few 
 words of him we now commemorate. Mr. 
 Justice Story, in an address delivered on 
 the occasion of his death, speaks "of those 
 exquisite judgments, the fruits of his own 
 unassisted meditations, from which the 
 court has received so much honor," and I 
 
statue of Chief justice Marshall. 1 5 
 
 have sometimes thought even the bar of 
 the country hardly reaHzes to what extent 
 he was, in some respedts, unassisted. He 
 was appointed Chief Justice in January, 
 1 80 1, and took his seat on the bench at the 
 following February term. The court had 
 then been in existence but eleven years, 
 and in that time less than one hundred 
 cases had passed under its judgment. The 
 engrossed minutes of its doings cover only 
 a little more than two hundred pages of 
 one of the volumes of its records, and its 
 reported decisions fill but five hundred 
 pages of three volumes of the reports 
 published by Mr. Dallas. The courts of 
 the several colonies before the Revolution, 
 and of the States afterwards, had done all 
 that was required of them, and yet the 
 volumes of their decisions published be- 
 fore 1 80 1 can be counted on little more 
 than the fingers of a single hand, and if 
 • these and all the cases decided before that 
 
1 6 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 time, which have been reported since, were 
 put into volumes of the size now issued 
 by the reporter of the Supreme Court, it 
 would not require the fingers of both the 
 hands for their full enumeration. The 
 reported decisions of all the circuit and 
 districit courts of the United States were 
 put into a little more than two hundred 
 pages of Dallas. 
 
 In this condition of the jurisprudence of 
 the country Marshall took his place at 
 the head of the national judiciary. The 
 Government, under the Constitution, was 
 only organized twelve years before, and in 
 the interval eleven amendments of the 
 Constitution had been regularly proposed 
 and adopted. Comparatively nothing had 
 been done judicially to define the powers 
 or develop the resources of the Constitu- 
 tion. The common law of the mother 
 country had been either silently or by 
 express enad;ment adopted as the founda- 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 1 7 
 
 tion of the system by which the rights of 
 persons and property were to be deter- 
 mined, but scarcely anything had been 
 done by the courts to adapt it to the new 
 form of government, or to the new rela- 
 tions of social life which a successful revo- 
 lution had produced. In short, the nation, 
 the Constitution, and the laws were in their 
 infancy. Under these circumstances it was 
 most fortunate for the country that the 
 great Chief Justice retained his high posi- 
 tion for thirty-four years, and that during 
 all that time, with scarcely any interrup- 
 tion, he kept on with the work he showed 
 himself so competent to perform. As 
 year after year went by and new occasion 
 required, with his irresistible logic, en- 
 forced by his cogent English, he developed 
 the hidden treasures of the Constitution, 
 demonstrated its capacities, and showed 
 beyond all possibility of doubt that a 
 government rightfully administered under 
 
 2 M 
 
1 8 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 its authority could proted itself against 
 itself and against the world. He kept 
 himself at the front on all questions of 
 constitutional law, and, consequently, his 
 master hand is seen in every case which 
 involved that subjed;. At the same time 
 he and his co-workers, whose names are, 
 some of them, almost as familiar as his 
 own, were engaged in laying, deep and 
 strong, the foundations on which the 
 jurisprudence of the country has since 
 been built. Hardly a day now passes 
 in the court he so dignified and adorned 
 without reference to some decision of his 
 time as establishing a principle which, 
 from that day to this, has been accepted 
 as undoubted law. 
 
 It is not strange that this is so. Great 
 as he was, he was made greater by those 
 about him, and the events in the midst of 
 which he lived. He sat with Paterson, 
 with Bushrod Washington, with William 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 19 
 
 Johnson, with Livingston, with Story, and 
 with Thompson, and there came before 
 him Webster and Pinkney and Wirt and 
 Dexter and Sergeant and Binney and 
 Martin, and many others equally illustri- 
 ous, who then made up the bar of the 
 Supreme Court. He was a giant among 
 giants. Abundance of time was taken 
 for consideration. Judgments, when an- 
 nounced, were the result of deliberate 
 thought and patient investigation, and 
 opinions were never filed until they had 
 been prepared with the greatest care. 
 The first volume of Cranch's Reports 
 embraces the work of two full years, and 
 all the opinions save one are from the pen 
 of the Chief Justice. Twenty-five cases 
 only are reported, but among them is 
 Marbury v. Madison, in which, for the 
 first time, it was announced by the Su- 
 preme Court that it was the duty of the 
 judiciary to declare an adt of the legislative 
 
20 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 department of the Government invalid if 
 clearly repugnant to the Constitution. 
 
 After this came, in quick succession, all 
 the various questions of constitutional, in- 
 ternational, and general law which would 
 naturally present themselves for judicial 
 determination in a new and rapidly devel- 
 oping country. The complications grow- 
 ing out of the wars in Europe, and of 
 our own war with Great Britain, brought 
 up their disputes for settlement, and the 
 boundary line between the powers of the 
 States and of the United States had more 
 than once to be run and marked. The 
 authority of the United States was ex- 
 tended by treaty over territory not origi- 
 nally within its jurisdidlion. All these 
 involved the consideration of subjects 
 comparatively new in the domain of the 
 law, and rights were to be settled, not on 
 authorities alone, but by the application of 
 the principles of right reason. Here the 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 2 1 
 
 Chief Justice was at home, and when, at 
 the end of his long and eminent career he 
 laid down his life, he, and those who had 
 so ably assisted him in his great work, had 
 the right to say that the judicial power 
 of the United States had been carefully 
 preserved and wisely administered. The 
 nation can never honor him, or them, too 
 much for the work they accomplished. 
 
 Without detaining you longer, I ask 
 you to look upon what is hereafter to 
 represent, at the seat of "government, the 
 reverence of the Congress and the bar of 
 the United States for John Marshall, 
 "The Expounder of the Constitution." 
 
 William Henry Rawle, Esq., of Philadel- 
 phia, then delivered the following oration : 
 
ORATION. 
 
 John Marshall, Chief Justice of the 
 United States, has been dead for nearly 
 half a century, and if it be asked why at 
 this late day we have come together to do 
 tardy justice to his memory and unveil this 
 statue in his honor, the answer may be 
 given in a few words. The history dates 
 from his death. He had held his last Court, 
 and had come northward to seek medical 
 aid in the city of Philadelphia, and there, 
 on the 6th of July, 1835, he died. While 
 tributes of respedt for the man and of grief 
 for the national loss were paid throughout 
 the country, it was felt by the Bar of the 
 city where he died that a lasting monu- 
 ment should be eredted to his memory 
 in the capital of the nation. To this 
 end subscriptions, limited in "amount, were 
 asked. About half came from the Bar of 
 
 Philadelphia, and of the rest, the largest 
 
 23 
 
24 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 contribution was from the city of Rich- 
 mond, but all told, the sum was utterly 
 insufficient. What money there was, was 
 invested by trustees as "The Marshall 
 Memorial Fund," and then the matter 
 seemed to pass out of men's minds. 
 Nearly fifty years went on. Another gen- 
 eration and still another came into the 
 world, till lately, on the death of the sur- 
 vivor of the trustees, himself an old man, 
 the late Peter McCall, the almost forgotten 
 fund was found to have been increased, by- 
 honest stewardship, seven-fold. Of the 
 original subscribers but six were known 
 to be alive, and upon their application 
 trustees were appointed to apply the fund 
 to its original purpose. It happened that 
 at this time the Forty-seventh Congress 
 appropriated of the people's money a sum 
 about equal in amount for the eredlion of 
 a statue to the memory of Chief Justice 
 Marshall, to be "placed in a suitable 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 25 
 
 public reservation in the city of Wash- 
 ington." To serve their common pur- 
 pose, the Congressional committee and the 
 trustees agreed to unite in the eredlion 
 of a statue and pedestal ; and after much 
 thought and care the commission was in- 
 trusted to William W. Story, an artist who 
 brought to the task not only his acknowl- 
 edged genius, but a keen desire to perpet- 
 uate through the work of his hands the 
 face and form of one who had been not 
 only his father's professional brother but 
 the objedt of his chiefest respedt and admi- 
 ration. That work now stands before you. 
 Its pedestal bears the simple inscription : — 
 
 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ERECTED BY 
 
 THE BAR AND THE CONGRESS 
 
 OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 A. D. MDCCCLXXXIV. 
 
26 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 No more "suitable public reservation" 
 could be found than the ground on which 
 we stand, almost within the shadow of the 
 Capitol in which for more than thirty years 
 he held the highest judicial position in the 
 country. 
 
 It may well be that the even tenor of his 
 judicial life has driven from some minds 
 the story of his brilliant and eventful 
 youth. The same simplicity,- the same 
 modesty which marked the child distin- 
 guished the great Chief Justice, but, as a 
 judge, his life was necessarily one of 
 thought and study, of enforced retirement 
 from much of the busy world, dealing more 
 with results than processes ; and the surges 
 of fadlion and of passion, the heat of ambi- 
 tion, the thirst of power, reached him not in 
 his high judicial station. Yet he had him- 
 self been a busy adtor on the scenes of life, 
 and if his later days seemed colorless, the 
 story of his earlier years is full of charm. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 27 
 
 The eldest of a large family, reared in 
 Fauquier County, in Virginia, he was one 
 of the tenderest, the most lovable of chil- 
 dren. He had never, said his father, seri- 
 ously displeased him in his life. To his 
 mother, to his sisters especially, did he 
 bear that chivalrous devotion which to the 
 last hour of his life he showed to women. 
 Such education as came to him was little 
 got from schools, for the thinly-settled 
 country and his father's limited means for- 
 bade this. A year's Latin at fourteen at a 
 school a hundred miles from his home, 
 and another year's Latin at home with the 
 redtor of the parish was the sum of his 
 classical teaching. What else of it he 
 learned was with the unsympathetic aid of 
 grammar and didtionary. But his father — 
 who, Marshall was- wont to say, was a 
 far abler man than any of his sons, and 
 who in early life was Washington's com- 
 panion as a land surveyor, and, later, 
 
28 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 fought gallantly under him — his father was 
 well read in English literature, and loved 
 to open its treasures to the quick, receptive 
 mind of his eldest child, who in it all, es- 
 pecially in history and still more in poetry, 
 found an enduring delight. Much of his 
 time was passed in the open air, among 
 the hills and valleys of that beautiful 
 country, and thus it was that in adtive 
 exercise, in day dreams of heroism and 
 poetry, in rapid and eager mastery of such 
 learning as came within his reach, and 
 surrounded by the tender love, the idol- 
 atry of a happy family, his earlier days 
 were passed. 
 
 The first note of war that rang through 
 the land called him to arms, and from 1775, 
 when was his first battle on the soil of his 
 own State, until the end of 1779, he was 
 in the army. Through the battles of Iron 
 Hill, of Brandywine, of Germantown and 
 of Monmouth, he bore himself bravely, and 
 
statue of Chief justice Marshall. 29 
 
 through the dreary privations, the hunger 
 and the nakedness of that ghastly winter at 
 Valley Forge, his patient endurance and 
 his cheeriness bespoke the very sweetest 
 temper that ever man was blessed with. 
 So long as any lived to speak, men would 
 tell how he was loved by the soldiers and 
 by his brother officers; how he was the 
 arbiter of their differences and the com- 
 poser of their disputes, and when called 
 to ad;, as he often was, as judge advocate, 
 he exercised that peculiar and delicate 
 judgment required of him who is not only 
 the prosecutor but the protedor of the 
 accused. It was in the duties of this office 
 that he first met and came to know well 
 the two men whom of all others on earth 
 he most admired and loved, and whose 
 impress he bore through his life, Wash- 
 ington and Hamilton. 
 
 While of Marshall's life war was but 
 the brief opening episode, yet before we 
 
30 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 leave these days, one part of them has a 
 peculiar charm. There were more officers 
 than were needed, and he had come back to 
 his home. His letters from camp had been 
 read with delight by his sisters and his sis- 
 ters' friends. His reputation as a soldier 
 had preceded him, and the daughters of 
 Virginia, then, as ever, ready to welcome 
 those who do service to the State, greeted 
 him with their sweetest smiles. One of 
 these was a shy, diffident girl of fourteen ; 
 and to the amazement of all, and perhaps 
 to her own, from that time his devotion to 
 her knew no variableness neither shadow 
 of turning. She afterwards became his 
 wife, and for fifty years, in sickness and in 
 health, he loved and cherished her till, as 
 he himself said, "her sainted spirit fled 
 from the sufferings of life." When her 
 release came at last, he mourned her as 
 he had loved her, and the years were few 
 before he followed her to the grave. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 31 
 
 But from this happy home he tore him- 
 self away, and at the College of William 
 and Mary attended a course of law ledl- 
 ures and in due time was admitted to 
 practice. But prad;ice there was none, for 
 Arnold had then invaded Virginia, and it 
 was literally true that inter arma silent 
 leges. To resist the invasion, Marshall 
 returned to the army, and at its end, there 
 being still a redundance of officers in the 
 Virginia line, he resigned his commission 
 and again took up his studies. With the 
 return of peace the courts were opened and 
 his career at the bar began. Tradition tells 
 how even at that early day his charadteris- 
 tic traits began to show themselves — his 
 simple, quiet bearing, his frankness and 
 candor, his marvellous grasp of principle, 
 his power of clear statement and his 
 logical reasoning. It is pleasant to know 
 that hi^ rapid rise excited no envy among 
 his associates, for his other high qualities 
 
32 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 were exceeded by his modesty. In after 
 life this modesty was wont to attribute his 
 success to the "too partial regard of his 
 former companions-in-arms, who, at the 
 end of the war, had returned to their fam- 
 ilies and were scattered over the States." 
 But the cause was in himself, and not in 
 his friends. 
 
 In the spring of 1782 he was eledled to 
 the State legislature, and in the autumn 
 chosen to the Executive Council. In the 
 next year took place his happy marriage, 
 his removal to Richmond, thenceforth his 
 home, and soon after, his retirement, as he 
 supposed, from public life. But this was 
 not to be, for his eledtion again and again 
 to the legislature called on him for service 
 which he was too patriotic to withhold, even 
 had he felt less keenly how full of trouble 
 were the times. Marshall threw himself, 
 heart and soul, into the great questions 
 which bade fair to destroy by dissension 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 33 
 
 what had been won by arms, and opposed 
 to the best talent of his own State, he 
 ranged himself with an unpopular minor- 
 ity. In measured words, years later, when 
 he wrote the life of Washington, he defined 
 the issue which then threatened to tear the 
 country asunder. It was, he said, " di- 
 vided into two great political parties, the 
 one of which contemplated America as a 
 nation, and labored incessantly to invest 
 the Federal head with powers competent 
 to the preservation of the Union. The 
 other attached itself to the State govern- 
 ment, viewed all the powers of Congress 
 with jealousy, and assented relud;antly to 
 measures which would enable the head to 
 adl in any respedt independently of the 
 members." Though the proposed Consti- 
 tution might form, as its preamble declares, 
 "a more perfect union" than had the Ar- 
 ticles of Confederation; though it might 
 prevent anarchy and save the States from 
 
 3 M 
 
34 Statue of Chief justice Marsha//. 
 
 becoming secret or open enemies of each 
 other; though it might replace "a Govern- 
 ment depending upon thirteen distindt 
 sovereignties for the preservation of the 
 pubHc faith" by one whose power might 
 regulate and control them all — the more 
 numerous and powerful, and certainly the 
 more clamorous party insisted that such 
 evils, and evils worse than these, were 
 as nothing compared to the surrender of 
 State independence to Federal sovereignty. 
 In public and private, in popular meet- 
 ings, in legislatures and in conventions, 
 on both sides passion was mingled with 
 argument. Notably in Marshall's own 
 State did many of her ablest sons, then and 
 afterwards most dear to her, throw all. that 
 they had of courage, of high character and 
 of patriotism, into the attempt to save the 
 young country from its threatened yoke 
 of despotism. Equally brave and able 
 were those few who led the other party, 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 35 
 
 and chief among them were Washington, 
 Madison, Randolph and, later, Marshall. 
 Young as he was, it was felt that such a 
 man could not be left out of the State con- 
 vention to which the Constitution was to 
 be submitted, but he was warned by his 
 best friends that unless he should pledge 
 himself to oppose it his defeat was certain. 
 He said plainly that, if eledted, he should 
 be " a determined advocate for its adoption," 
 and his integrity and fearlessness overcame 
 even the prejudices of his constituents. 
 And in that memorable debate, which 
 lasted five-and-twenty days, though with 
 his usual modesty he contented himself 
 with supporting the lead of Madison, three 
 times he came to the front, and to the 
 questions of the power of taxation, the 
 power over the militia and the power of 
 the judiciary, he brought the full force of 
 his fast developing strength. The contest 
 was severe and the vote close. The Con- 
 
36 StaUie of Chief yusHce Marshall. 
 
 stitution was ratified by a majority of only 
 ten. But as to Marshall, it has been truly 
 said that "in sustaining the Constitution, 
 he unconsciously prepared for his own 
 glory the imperishable connedtion which 
 his name now has with its principles." 
 And again his modesty would have it that 
 he builded better than he knew, for in later 
 times he would ascribe the course which he 
 took to casual circumstances as much as 
 to judgment; he had early, he said, caught 
 up the words, "United we stand, divided 
 we fall"; the feelings they inspired became 
 a part of his being; he carried them into 
 the army where, associating with brave 
 men from different States who were risk- 
 ing life and all else in a common cause, he 
 was confirmed in the habit of considering 
 America as his country, and Congress as 
 his Government. 
 
 The convention was held in 1788. Again 
 Marshall was sent to the legislature, 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 37 
 
 where in power of logical debate he con- 
 fessedly led the House, until in 1792 he 
 left it finally. 
 
 During the next five years he was at the 
 height of his professional reputation. The 
 Federal reports and those of his own State 
 show that among a Bar distinguished al- 
 most beyond all others, he was engaged in 
 most of the important cases of the time. 
 A few of these he has reported himself; 
 they are modestly inserted at the end of 
 the volume, and are referred to by the re- 
 porter as contributed "by a gentleman high 
 in practice at the time, and by whose per- 
 mission they are now published." 
 
 And here a word must be said as to the 
 nature and extent of his technical learning, 
 for it is almost without parallel that one 
 should admittedly have held the highest 
 position at the Bar, and then for thirty-five 
 years should, as admittedly, have held the 
 reputation of a great judge, when the en~ 
 
38 statue of Chief yitstice Marshall. 
 
 tire time between the very commencement 
 of his studies and his rehnquishment of 
 pradlice was less than seventeen years. In 
 that generation of lawyers and the genera- 
 tion which succeeded them, it was not un- 
 usual that more than half that time passed 
 before they had either a cause or a client. 
 Marshall had emphatically what is called 
 a legal mind-; his marvellous instindt as to 
 what the law ought to be doubtless saved 
 him much labor which was necessary to 
 those less intelledlually great. With the 
 principles of the science he was of course 
 familiar; with their sources he was scarcely 
 less so. A century ago there was less law 
 to be learned and men learned it more com- 
 pletely. Except as to such addition as has 
 of late years come to us from the civil law, 
 the foundation of it was the same as now 
 — the same common law, the same decis- 
 ions, the same statutes — and in that day, a 
 century's separation from the mother coun- 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 39 
 
 try had wrought little change in the colo- 
 nies except to adapt this law to their local 
 needs with marvellous skill. Save as to 
 this, the law of the one country was_ the 
 law of the other, and the decisions at 
 Westminster Hall before the Revolution 
 were of as much authority here as there. 
 There_ was not a single published volume 
 of American reports. The enormous su- 
 perstrudlure which has since been raised 
 upon the same foundation, bewildering 
 from its height, the number of its stories, 
 the vast number of its chambers, the intri- 
 cacies of its passages, has been a necessity 
 from the growth of a country rapid be- 
 yond precedent in a century to which his- 
 tory knows no parallel. But the founda- 
 tion of it was the same, and the men of the 
 last century had not far to go beyond the 
 foundation, and hence their technical learn- 
 ing was, as to some at least, more complete, 
 if not more profound. There were a few 
 
40 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 who said that Marshall was never what 
 is called a thoroughly technical lawyer. If 
 by this is -meant that he never mistook the 
 grooves and ruts of the law for the law 
 itself — that he looked at the law from above 
 and not from below, and did not cite pre- 
 cedent where citation was not necessary — 
 the remark might have semblance of truth, 
 but the same might be said of his noted 
 abstinence from illustration and analogy, 
 both of which he could, upon occasion, call 
 in aid; but no one can read those argu- 
 ments at the Bar or judgments on the 
 bench in which he thought it needful to 
 establish his propositions by technical pre- 
 cedents, without feeling that he possessed 
 as well the knowledge of their existence 
 and the reason of their existence, as the 
 power to analyze them. But he never 
 mistook the means for the end. 
 
 Even in the height of his prosperous 
 labor he never turned his back upon pub- 
 
statue of Chief justice Marshall. 41 
 
 lie duty. Not all the excesses of the 
 French revolution could make the mass of 
 Americans forget that France had been 
 our ally in the war with England, and 
 when, in 1793, these nations took arms 
 against each other, and our proclamation 
 of neutrality was issued to the world, loud 
 and deep were the curses that rang through 
 the land. Hated as the proclamation was, 
 Marshall had no doubt of its wisdom. 
 Great was his grief to oppose -himself to 
 the judgment of Madison, but he was con- 
 tent to share the odium heaped upon 
 Hamilton and Washington, and to be de- 
 nounced as an aristocrat, a loyalist and an 
 enemy to republicanism. With rare cour- 
 age, at a public meeting at Richmond he 
 defended the wisdom and policy of the 
 administration, and his argument as to 
 the Constitutionality of the proclamation 
 anticipated the judgment of the world. 
 Two years later came a severer trial. 
 
42 statue of Chief justice Marshall. 
 
 Without his knowledge and against his 
 will, Marshall had been again eledled to 
 the legislature. Our minister to Great 
 Britain had concluded a commercial treaty 
 with that power, and its ratification had 
 been advised by the Senate and adted on 
 by the President. The indignation of the 
 people knew no bounds. In no State was 
 it greater than in Virginia. The treaty was 
 "insulting to the dignity, injurious to the 
 interests, dangerous to the security and re- 
 pugnant to the Constitution of the United 
 States" — so said the resolutions of a re- 
 markable meeting at Richmond, and these 
 words echoed through the country. Had 
 not the Constitution given to Congress the 
 right to regulate commerce, and how dared 
 the Executive, without Congress, negotiate 
 a treaty of commerce ? Marshall's friends 
 begged him, for his own sake, not to stem 
 the popular torrent. He hoped at first that 
 his own legislature might, as he wrote to 
 
statue of Chief justice Marshall. 43 
 
 Hamilton from Richmond, "ultimately 
 consult the interest or honor of the nation. 
 But now," he went on to say, "when all 
 hope of this had vanished, it was deemed 
 advisa,ble to make the experiment, however 
 hazardous it might be. A meeting was 
 called which was more numerous than I 
 have ever seen at this place ; and after a 
 very ardent and zealous discussion, which 
 consumed the day, a decided majority de- 
 clared in favor of a resolution that the 
 welfare and honor of the nation required 
 us to give full effedt to the treaty negotiated 
 with Britain." Thus measuredly he told 
 the story of one of his greatest triumphs, 
 and afterwards, in his place in the House, 
 he again met the Constitutional objedtion 
 in a speech which, men said at the time, 
 was even stronger than the other. As he 
 spoke, reason asserted her sway over pas- 
 sion, party feeling gave way to conviction, 
 and for once the vote of the House was 
 
44 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 turned. Of this speech no recorded trace 
 remains, but even in that time, when news 
 travelled slowly, its fame spread abroad, 
 and the subsequent condudl of every ad- 
 ministration has to this day rested upon 
 the construdlion then given to the Consti- 
 tution by Marshall. 
 
 Henceforth his reputation became na- 
 tional, and when, a few months later, he 
 came to Philadelphia to argue the great 
 case of the confiscation by Virginia of the 
 British debts, a contemporary said of him, 
 "Speaking, as he always does, to the judg- 
 ment merely, and for the simple purpose 
 of convincing, he was justly pronounced 
 one of the greatest men in the country." 
 He were less than human not to be moved 
 by this, but, in writing to a friend, he mod- 
 estly said, "A Virginian who supported 
 with any sort of reputation the measures 
 of the Government was such a vara avis 
 that I was received with a degree of kind- 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 45 
 
 ness which I had not anticipated." Soon 
 after, Washington offered him the position 
 of Attorney-General, and some months 
 later, the mission to France. Both he de- 
 clined. His determination to remain at 
 the Bar, was, he thought, unalterable. 
 
 And again he altered it. Our relations 
 with France had drifted from friendship to 
 coolness, and from coolness to almost war. 
 Neither France herself nor the "French 
 patriots" here had forgotten or forgiven 
 the treaty with Great Britain, and if the 
 disgust at our persistent neutrality did not 
 break into open war, it was because France 
 knew, or thought she knew, that the entire 
 American opposition to the Government 
 was on her side. Just short of war she 
 stopped. Privateers fitted out by orders 
 of the French minister here preyed upon 
 our commerce ; the very ship which brought 
 him to our shores began to capture our 
 vessels before even his credentials had 
 
46 Statue of Chief yttstice Marshall. 
 
 been presented ; later, by order of the 
 Diredory, he suspended his diplomatic 
 fundions here and flung to our people 
 turgid words of bitterness as he left; the 
 minister whom we had sent to France 
 when Marshall had declined to go, was 
 not onlv not received, but was ordered out 
 of the country and threatened with the 
 police. The crisis required the greatest 
 wisdom and firmness which the country 
 could command. Mr. Adams was then 
 President; he never lacked firmness, and 
 his words to Congress at its special session 
 were full of fearless dignity. "Three en- 
 voys," said he, "persons of talents and 
 integrity, long known and intrusted in the 
 three great divisions of the Union," were 
 to be sent to France, and Marshall was 
 to be one of them. It went hard with him, 
 but the struggle was short, and as he left 
 his home at Richmond crowds of citizens 
 attended him for miles, and all party feel- 
 
statue of Chief justice Marsha//. 47 
 
 ing was merged in resped; and affection. 
 The issue of his errand belongs to history. 
 He has himself told us, in his Life of 
 Washington, how the envoys — his own 
 name being characfteristically withheld — 
 were met by contumely and insult ; how 
 the wiliest minister of the age suggested 
 that a large sum of money must be paid 
 to the Directory as a mere preliminary to 
 negotiation; how, if they refused, it would 
 be known at home that they were corrupted 
 by British influence, and how insults and 
 menaces were borne with equal dignity. 
 But he has not told us that his were the 
 two letters to Talleyrand which have justly 
 been regarded as among the ablest State 
 papers in diplomacy. They were unan- 
 swerable, and nothing remained but to get 
 Marshall and one of his colleagues out 
 of the country with as little delay as was 
 consistent with additional marks of con- 
 tempt. His return showed that republics 
 
48 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 are not always ungrateful, for there came 
 out to him on his arrival a crowd even 
 greater than that which had witnessed his 
 departure, the Secretary of State and other 
 officials among them, and at a celebration 
 in his honor the phrase was coined which 
 afterwards became national, "Millions for 
 defense, but not one cent for tribute." 
 
 Now, surely, he had earned the right to 
 return to his loved professional labor. Nor 
 only this — he had earned the right to such 
 honor as the dignified labor of high ju- 
 dicial station could alone afford. The 
 position of Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States had fallen vacant, and 
 the President's choice rested on Mar- 
 shall. "He has raised the American 
 people in their own esteem," wrote Mr. 
 Adams to the Secretary of State, "and if 
 the influence of truth and justice, reason 
 and argument, is not lost in Europe, he 
 has raised the consideration of the United 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 49 
 
 States in that quarter." But again there 
 had come to him the call of duty. For 
 Washington, who, in view of the expedted 
 war with France, had been appointed to 
 command the army, had begged Mar- 
 shall to come to him at Mount Vernon, 
 and there in earnest talk for days dwelt 
 upon the importance to the country that 
 he should be returned to Congress. His 
 reluctance was great not only to re-enter 
 public life, but to throw himself into a con- 
 test sure to be marked with an intensity of 
 public excitement, degenerating into pri- 
 vate calumny. If Washington himself had 
 not escaped this, how should he ? 
 
 The canvass began. In the midst of it 
 came the offer of the repose and dignity of 
 the Supreme Bench. But his word had 
 been given and he at once declined. The 
 contest was severe, his majority was small, 
 and his eledtion, though intensely grateful 
 to Washington and those who thought 
 
 4 M 
 
50 Statue of Chief yiLstice Marshall. 
 
 with him, was met with many misgivings 
 from, some who thought him "too much 
 disposed to govern the world according to 
 rules of logic." 
 
 His first adl in Congress was to an- 
 nounce the death of Washington, and the 
 words of the resolutions which he then 
 presented, though written by another, 
 meet our eyes on every hand, "First in 
 war, first in peace, and first in the hearts 
 of his countrymen." It was like Mar- 
 shall that when later he came to write 
 the life of Washington, he should have 
 said that the resolutions were presented 
 by "a member of the House." 
 
 In that House — the last Congress that 
 sat in Philadelphia — he met the ablest men 
 of the country. New member as he was, 
 when the debate involved questions of law 
 or the Constitution he was confessedly the 
 first man in it. His speech on the ques- 
 tion of Nash's surrender is said to be the 
 
Stahie of Chief yustice Marshall. 5 1 
 
 only one ever revised by him, and, as it 
 stands, is a model of parliamentary argu- 
 ment. The President had advised the 
 surrender of the prisoner to the English 
 Government to answer a charge of murder 
 on the high seas on board a British man- 
 of-war. Popular outcry insisted that the 
 prisoner was an American, unlawfully im- 
 pressed, and that the death was caused in 
 his attempt to regain his freedom; and 
 though this was untrue, it was urged that 
 as the case involved principles of law, the 
 question of surrender was one for judicial 
 and not Executive decision. In most of its 
 aspedls the subjedl was confessedly new, 
 but it was exhausted by Marshall. Not 
 every case, he showed, which involves 
 principles of law necessarily came before 
 the courts; the parties here were two 
 nations, who could not litigate their 
 claims; the demand was not a case for 
 judicial cognizance; the treaty under which 
 
52 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 the surrender was made was a law en- 
 joining the performance of a particular 
 objedl; the department to perform it was 
 the Executive, who, under the Constitu- 
 tion, wa^ to "take care that the laws be 
 faithfully executed"; and even if Congress 
 had not yet prescribed the particular mode 
 by which this was to be done, it was not 
 the less the duty of the Executive to exe- 
 cute it by any means it then possessed. 
 
 There was no answer to this, worthy the 
 name; the member seledted to answer it 
 sat silent; the resolutions against the erec- 
 tion were lost, and thus the power was 
 lodged where it should belong, '.and an 
 unwelcome and inappropriate jurisdic^iion 
 diverted from the judiciary. 
 
 The session was just over when, in May, 
 the President, without consulting Mar- 
 shall, appointed him Secretary of War. 
 He wrote to decline. As part of the well- 
 known disruption of the Cabinet the office 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 53 
 
 of Secretary of State became vacant, and 
 Marshall was appointed to and accepted 
 it. During his short tenure of office, an 
 occasion arose for the display of his best 
 powers, in his dispatch to our minister to 
 England concerning questions of great 
 moment under our treaty, of contraband, 
 blockade, impressment, and compensa- 
 tion to British subjecfts, a State paper not 
 surpassed by any in the archives of that 
 Department. 
 
 The autumn of 1800 witnessed the de- 
 feat of Mr. Adams for the Presidency and 
 the resignation of Chief Justice Ellsworth, 
 and, at Marshall's suggestion, Chief 
 Justice Jay was invited to return to his 
 former position, but declined. On being 
 again consulted, Marshall urged the ap- 
 pointment of Mr. Justice Paterson, then 
 on the Supreme Bench. Some said that 
 the vacant office might possibly be filled 
 by the President himself after the 3d of 
 
54 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 March, but Mr. Adams disclaimed the idea. 
 "I have already," wrote he, "by the nomi- 
 nation to this office of a gentleman in full 
 vigor of middle life, in the full habits of 
 business, and whose reading in the science 
 of law is fresh in his head, put it wholly 
 out of my power, and indeed it never was 
 in my hopes and wishes;" and on the 31st 
 of January, 1 801, the President requested 
 the Secretary of War " to execute the office 
 of Secretary of State so far as to affix the 
 seal of the United States to the inclosed 
 commission to the present Secretary of 
 State, John Marshall of Virginia, to be 
 Chief Justice of the United States." He 
 was then forty-six years old. 
 
 It is difficult for the present generation 
 to appreciate the contrast between the Su- 
 preme Court to which Marshall came 
 and the Supreme Court as he left it; the 
 contrast is scarcely less between the Court 
 as he left it and the Court of to-day. For 
 
statue of Chief justice Marsha//. 55 
 
 the first time in the history of the world 
 had a written constitution become an or- 
 ganic law of government ; for the first time 
 was such an instrument to be submitted 
 to judgment. With admirable force Mr. 
 Gladstone has said, "As the British Con- 
 stitution is the most subtile organism 
 which has proceeded from progressive 
 history, so the American Constitution is 
 the most wonderful work ever struck off 
 at a given time by the "brain and purpose 
 of man." On that subtile and unwritten 
 Constitution of England, the professional 
 training of every older lawyer in the 
 country had been based, and they had 
 learned from it that the power of Parlia- 
 ment was above and beyond the judg- 
 ments of any court in the realm. Though 
 this American Constitution declared in so 
 many words that the judicial power should 
 extend to "all cases arising under the 
 Constitution and the laws of the United 
 
56 statue of Chief ytistice Marshall. 
 
 States," yet it was difficult for men so 
 trained to conceive how any law which the 
 Legislative, department might pass and the 
 Executive approve could be set aside by the 
 mere judgment of a court. There was no 
 precedent for it in ancient or modern his- 
 tory. Hence when first this question was 
 suggested in a Federal court, it was re- 
 ceived with grave misgiving; the general 
 principles of the Constitution were not, it 
 was said, to be regarded as rules to fetter 
 and control, but as matter merely declara- 
 tory and diredlory; and even if legislative 
 ad;s diredlly contrary to it shottld be void, 
 whose was the power to declare them so? 
 Equally without precedent was every 
 other question. Those who, in their places 
 as legislators, had fought the battle of 
 State sovereignty, were ready to urge in 
 the courts of justice that the Federal Gov- 
 ernment could claim no powers that had 
 not been delegated to it In ipsissimis 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 57 
 
 verbis. If delegated at all, they were to 
 be contracted by constru<5tion within the 
 narrowest limits. Whether the right of 
 Congress to pass all laws "necessary and 
 proper" for the Federal Government was 
 not restridled to such as were indispen- 
 sable to that end; whether the right of 
 taxation could be exercised by a State 
 against creations of the Federal Govern- 
 ment; whether a Federal court could revise 
 the judgment of a State court in a case 
 arising under the Constitution and laws 
 of the United States ; whether the officers 
 of the Federal Government could be pro- 
 tedted against State interference; how far 
 extended the power of Congress to regu- 
 late commerce within the States ; how far 
 to regulate foreign commerce as against 
 State enactment; how far extended the 
 prohibition to the States against emitting 
 bills of credit — these and like questions 
 were absolutely without precedent. 
 
58 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 It is not too much to say that but for 
 Marshall such questions could hardly 
 have been solved as they were. There 
 have been great judges before and since, 
 but none had ever such opportunity, and 
 none ever seized and improved it as he 
 did. For, as was said by our late Presi- 
 dent, "He found the Constitution paper, 
 and he made it power; he found it a skel- 
 eton, and clothed it with flesh and blood." 
 Not in a few feeble words at such a time 
 as this can be told how, with easy power 
 he grasped the momentous questions as 
 they arose; how his great statesmanship 
 lifted them to a high plane ; how his own 
 clear vision pierced clouds which caused 
 others to see as through a glass darkly, 
 and how all that his wisdom could con- 
 ceive and his reason could prove was 
 backed by a judicial courage unequalled 
 in history. 
 
 It may be doubted whether, great as is 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 59 
 
 his reputation, full justice has yet been 
 done him. In his interpretation of the 
 law, the premises seem so undeniable, the 
 reasoning so logical, the conclusions so 
 irresistible, that men are wont to wonder 
 that there had ever been any question at 
 all. 
 
 A single instance — the first which arose 
 — may tell its own story. Congress had 
 given to his own court a jurisdidlion not 
 within the range of its powers under the 
 Constitution. If it could lawfully do this, 
 the case before the court was plain. 
 Whether it could, said the court, in Mar- 
 shall's words, "Whether an adt repug- 
 nant to the Constitution can become the 
 law of the land, is a question deeply inter- 
 esting to the United States, but, happily, 
 not of an intricacy proportioned to its in- 
 terest;" and in these few words was the 
 demonstration made: "It is a propo- 
 sition too plain to be contested, that the 
 
6o Statue of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 Constitution controls any legislative adl 
 repugnant to it, or that the legislature can 
 alter the Constitution by an ordinary ad;. 
 Between these alternatives there is no 
 middle ground. The Constitution is either 
 a superior paramount law, unchangeable 
 by ordinary means, or it is on a level with 
 ordinary legislative adls, and, like other 
 acts, is alterable when the legislature shall 
 please to alter it. If the former part of 
 the alternative be true, then a legislative 
 adl contrary to the Constitution is not 
 law ; if the latter part be true, then written 
 constitutions are absurd attempts on the 
 part of the people to limit a power in its 
 own nature illimitable." 
 
 Here was established one of the great 
 foundation principles of the Government, 
 and then in a few sentences, and for the 
 first time, was clearly and tersely stated 
 the theory of the Constitution as to the 
 separate powers of the Legislature and the 
 
statue of Chief fttstice Marshall. 6i 
 
 Judiciary. If, he said, its theory was that 
 an ad: of the Legislature repugnant to it 
 was void, such an adt could not bind the 
 courts and oblige them to give it effedl. 
 This would be to overthrow in fadl what 
 was established in theory. It was of the 
 very essence of judicial duty to expound 
 and interpret the law; to determine which 
 of two conflidling laws should prevail. 
 When a law came in conflict with the 
 Constitution, the judicial department must 
 decide between them. Otherwise, the 
 courts must close their eyes on the Con- 
 stitution, which they were sworn to sup- 
 port, and see only the law 
 
 The exposition thus begun was con- 
 tinued for more than thirty years, and in 
 a series of judgments, contained in many 
 volumes, is to be found the basis of what 
 is to-day the constitutional law of this 
 country. Were it possible, it would be 
 inappropriate to follow here, with what- 
 
62 statue of Chief ytistice Marshall. 
 
 ever profit, the processes by which this 
 great work was done. The least approach 
 to technical analysis would demand a 
 statement of the successive questions as 
 they arose, each fraught with the history 
 of the time and each suggesting illustra- 
 tions and analogies which subsequent time 
 has developed. It may have been that 
 could Marshall have foreseen the extent 
 to which, in some instances, his conclu- 
 sions could be carried, in the uncertain 
 future and under such wholly changed 
 circumstances as no man could then con- 
 jedlure, he would possibly have qualified 
 or limited their application ; but the marvel 
 is, that of all he wrought in the field of 
 constitutional labor there is so little that 
 admits of even question. 
 
 But besides this, there was much more. 
 It has been truly said of him that he 
 would have been a great judge at any 
 time and in any country. Great in the 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 63 
 
 sense in which Nottingham and Hard- 
 wicke as to equity were great; in which 
 Mansfield as to commercial law and Stow- 
 ell as to admiralty were great — great in 
 that, with little precedent to guide them, 
 they produced a system with which the 
 wisdom of succeeding generations has 
 found little fault and has little changed. 
 In Marshall's court there was little pre- 
 cedent by which to determine the rights 
 of the Indian tribes over the land which 
 had once been theirs, or their rights as 
 nations against the States in which they 
 dwelt; there was little precedent when, 
 beyond the seas, the heat of war had pro- 
 duced the British Orders in Council and 
 the retaliatory Berlin and Milan Decrees ; 
 when the conflicting rights of neutrals and 
 belligerents, of captors and claimants, of 
 those trading under the flag of peace and 
 those privateering under letters of marque 
 and reprisal; when the effed of the judg- 
 
64 statue of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 merits of foreign tribunals; when the 
 jurisdidlion of the sovereign upon the 
 high seas — when these and similar ques- 
 tions arose, there was little precedent for 
 their solution, and they had to be con- 
 sidered upon broad and general principles 
 of jurisprudence, and the result has been 
 a code for future time. 
 
 Passing from this, a word must be said 
 as to his judicial condudt when sitting 
 apart from his brethren in his Circuit 
 Courts. Especially when presiding over 
 trials by jury his best personal character- 
 istics were shown. The dignity, maintained 
 without effort, which forbade the possi- 
 bility of unseemly difference, the quick 
 comprehension, the unfailing patience, the 
 prompt ruling, the serene impartiality, and, 
 when required, the most absolute courage 
 and independence, made up as nearly per- 
 fect a judge at Nisi Prius as the world has 
 ever known. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 65 
 
 One instance only can be noticed here. 
 The story of Aaron Burr, with all its 
 reality and all its romance, must always, 
 spite of much that is repugnant, fascinate 
 both young and old. When, in a phase of 
 his varied life, he who had been noted, if 
 not famous, as a soldier, as a lawyer, as an 
 orator, who had won the reason of men 
 and charmed the hearts of women, who 
 had held the high office of Vice-President 
 of the United States, and whose hands 
 were red with the blood of Hamilton — 
 when he found himself on trial for his life 
 upon the charge of high treason, before a 
 judge who was Hamilton's dear friend and 
 a jury chosen with difficulty from an ex- 
 cited people, what wonder that, like Cain, 
 he felt himself singled out from his fellows, 
 and, coming between his counsel and the 
 court, exclaimed: "Would to God that I 
 did stand on the same ground with any 
 other man!" And yet the impartiality 
 
 S M 
 
66 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 which marked the condudt of those trials 
 was never excelled in history. By the 
 law of our mother country to have only 
 compassed and imagined the govern- 
 ment's subversion was treason; but, ac- 
 cording to our Constitution, "treason 
 against the United States shall consist 
 only in levying war against them, or in 
 adhering to their enemies, giving them 
 aid and comfort," and can it be, said Mar- 
 shall, that the landing of a few men, 
 however desperate and however intent to 
 overthrow the government of a State, was 
 a levying of war? It might be a conspir- 
 acy, but it was not treason within the Con- 
 stitution — and Burr's accomplices were dis- 
 charged of their high crime. And upon his 
 own memorable trial — that strange scene 
 in which these men, the prisoner and the 
 judge, each so striking in appearance, were 
 confronted, and as people said, "two such 
 pairs of eyes had never looked into one 
 
statue of Chief Justice Marshall. 67 
 
 another before" — upon that trial the scales 
 of justice were held with absolutely even 
 hand. No greater display of judicial skill 
 and judicial re(5titude was ever witnessed. 
 No more effedtive dignity ever added 
 weight to judicial language. Outside the 
 court and through the country it was cried 
 that " the people of America demanded a 
 convi(5tion," and within it all the pressure 
 which counsel dared to borrow was ex- 
 erted to this end. It could hardly be 
 passed by. " That this court dares not 
 usurp power, is most true," began the last 
 lines of Marshall's charge to the jury. 
 "That this court dares not shrink from its 
 duty, is not less true. No man is desirous 
 of becoming the peculiar subjed; of 
 calumny. No man, might he let the 
 bitter cup pass from him without self-re- 
 proach, would drain it to the bottom. But 
 if he have no choice in the case, if there 
 be no alternative presented to him but a 
 
68 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 derelidtion of duty or the opprobrium of 
 those who are denominated the world, he 
 merits the contempt as well as the indig- 
 nation of his country, who can hesitate 
 which to embrace." That counsel should, 
 he said, be impatient at any deliberation of 
 the court, and suspedt or fear the opera- 
 tion of motives to which alone they could 
 ascribe that deliberation, was perhaps a 
 frailty incident to human nature, "but if 
 any condudt could warrant a sentiment 
 that it would deviate to the one side or 
 the other from the line prescribed by duty 
 and by law, that condudt would be viewed 
 by the judges themselves with an eye of 
 extreme severity, and would long be rec- 
 olledled with deep and serious regrets." 
 
 The result was acquittal, and as was 
 said by the angry counsel for the Govern- 
 ment, " Marshall has stepped in between 
 Burr and death!" Though the disap- 
 pointment was extreme; though starting 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 69 
 
 from the level of excited popular feeling, it 
 made its way upward till it reached the dig- 
 nity of grave dissatisfadion expressed in 
 a President's message to Congress ; though 
 the trial led to legislative alteration of the 
 law, the judge was unmoved by criticism, 
 no matter from what quarter, and was con- 
 tent to await the judgment of posterity 
 that never, in all the dark history of 
 State trials, was the law, as then it stood 
 and bound both parties, ever interpreted 
 with more impartiality to the accuser and 
 the accused. 
 
 Once only did Marshall enter the 
 field of authorship. Washington had be- 
 queathed all his papers, public and pri- 
 vate, to his favorite nephew, who was one 
 of Marshall's associates on the bench. 
 It was agreed between them that Judge 
 Washington should contribute the material 
 and that Marshall should prepare the 
 biography. The bulk of papers was enor- 
 
yo Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 mous, and Marshall had just taken his 
 seat on the bench and was deep in judi- 
 cial work. Thf task was done under se- 
 vere pressure, and ill health more than 
 once interrupted it; but it was a labor of 
 love, and his whole heart went out toward 
 the subjedl. His political opponents feared 
 that his strong convidtions, which he never 
 concealed, would now be turned to the 
 account of his party, but the writer was 
 as impartial as the judge. He recalled 
 and perpetuated the intrigues and cabals, 
 the disappointments and the griefs which, 
 equally with the successes, were part of 
 Washington's life; but full justice was 
 done to those men whom both Washing- 
 ton and his biographer distrusted and op- 
 posed. It is agreed that for minuteness, 
 impartiality, and accuracy, the history is 
 exceeded by none. There were those who 
 said the work was colorless, and others 
 were severe by reason of the absolute 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 7 1 
 
 truth which became their most absolute 
 punishment, but no one's judgment was 
 as severe as Marshall's own, save only 
 as to its accuracy. Once only was this 
 seriously questioned, and by one of the 
 most distinguished of his opponents, and 
 the result was complete vindication. 
 
 It is matter of history that upon Wash- 
 ington's death the House had resolved 
 that a marble monument should be eredted 
 in the city of Washington, "so designed 
 as to commemorate the great events of his 
 military and political life." But, as Mar- 
 shall tells us, "that those great events 
 should be commemorated could not be 
 pleasing to those who had condemned, 
 and continued to condemn, the whole 
 course of his administration." The reso- 
 lution was postponed in the Senate and 
 never passed, and almost the only tinge 
 of bitterness in his pages is that those 
 who possessed the ascendency over the 
 
72 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 public sentiment employed their influence 
 " to impress the idea that the only proper 
 ,monument to a meritorious citizen was 
 that which the people would eredt in their 
 afledtions." This he wrote in 1807 and 
 repeated in 1832, and in the next year 
 the people resolved that this should no 
 longer be. The National Monument As- 
 sociation was then formed, and Marshall 
 was its first president. Under its auspices, 
 and with the aid, long after; of large ap- 
 propriations by Congress, the gigantic 
 column within our sight is slowly and 
 gradually being reared. 
 
 Near the close of his life, when he was 
 seventy-four years old, Marshall was 
 chosen a member of the convention which 
 met, in 1829, to revise the constitution of 
 his native State. It was a remarkable 
 body. The best men of the State were 
 there. Some of them were among the 
 best men in the country, for then, as 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 73 
 
 always, Virginia had been proud to rear 
 and send forth men whose names were 
 foremost in their country's history. Prom- 
 inent among them were Madison, Monroe 
 and Marshall. Even then, party spirit 
 ran high. Two questions in particular, the 
 basis of representation and the tenure of 
 judicial office, distracted the convention as 
 they had distradted the people. On both 
 these questions Marshall spoke with his 
 accustomed dignity and not less than his 
 accustomed force, and his words were 
 listened to with reverent respedt. Upon 
 the subjedl of judicial tenure he spoke 
 from his very heart, "with the fervor and 
 almost the authority of an apostle." He 
 knew, better than any, how a judge, stand- 
 ing between the powerful and the power- 
 less, was bound to deal justice to both, 
 and that to this end his own position 
 should be beyond the reach of anything 
 mortal. "The judicial department," said 
 
74 Statue of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 he, "comes home in its effedts to every 
 man's fireside ; it passes on his property, 
 his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to 
 the last degree important that he should 
 be rendered perfedlly and completely in- 
 dependent, with nothing to control him 
 but God and his conscience?" And his 
 next words were fraught with the wisdom 
 of past ages, let us hope not with pro- 
 phetic foreboding: "I have always thought, 
 from my earliest youth till now, that the 
 greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever 
 infli(5led upon an ungrateful and a sin- 
 ning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, 
 or a dependent- judiciary." 
 
 Something has here been said of Mar- 
 shall's inner life in its earlier years, and 
 no man's life was ever more dear to those 
 around him than was his from its begin- 
 ning to its close. His singleness and 
 simplicity of charadler, his simplicity of 
 living, his love for the young and respedt 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 75 
 
 for the old, his deference to women, his 
 courteous bearing, his tender charity, his 
 reluctance to conceive offense and his read- 
 iness to forgive it, have become traditions 
 from which in our memories of him we in- 
 terweave all that we most look up to, with 
 all that we take most nearly to our hearts. 
 As the evening of life cast its long 
 shadows before him, the labor and sorrow 
 that come with four-score vears were not 
 allowed to pass him by. Great physical 
 suffering came to him; the hours not 
 absorbed in work brought to him memo- 
 ries of her whose life had been one with 
 his for fifty years. The "great simple 
 heart, too brave to be ashamed of tears," 
 was too brave not to confess that rarely 
 did he go through a night without shed- 
 ding them for her. No outward trace of 
 this betrayed itself, but lest some part of 
 it should, all unconsciously to himself, 
 impair his mental force, he begged those 
 
76 statue of Chief ytistice Marshall. 
 
 nearest to him to tell him in plain words 
 when any signs of failing should appear. 
 But the steady light within burned brightly 
 to the last, however waning might be his 
 mortal strength. He met his end, not at 
 his home, but surrounded by those most 
 dear to him. As it drew near, he wrote 
 the simple inscription to be placed upon 
 his grave. His parentage, his marriage, 
 with his birth and death, were all he wished 
 it to contain. And as the long summer 
 day faded, the life of this great and good 
 man went out, and in the words of his 
 Church's liturgy, he was "gathered to his 
 fathers, having the testimony of a good 
 conscience, in the communion of the cath- 
 olic Church, in the confidence of a certain 
 faith, in the comforb>of a reasonable, relig- 
 ious and holy hope, in favor with God, 
 and in perfedt charity with the world. " 
 
 And for what in his life he did for us, 
 let there be lasting memory. He and the 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 77 
 
 men of his time have passed away; other 
 generations have succeeded them ; other 
 phases of our country's growth have come 
 and gone; other trials, greater a hundred 
 fold than he or they could possibly have 
 imagined, have jeoparded the nation's life; 
 but still that which they wrought remains 
 to us, secured by the same means, enforced 
 by the same authority, dearer far for all 
 that is past, and holding together a great, 
 a united and a happy people. And all 
 largely because he whose figure is now 
 before us has, above and beyond all others, 
 taught the people of the United States, in 
 words of absolute authority, what was the 
 Constitution which they ordained, " in 
 order to form a more perfed; union, estab- 
 lish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, 
 provide for the common defense, promote 
 the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
 ings of liberty to themselves and their 
 posterity." 
 
78 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 Wherefore, with all gratitude, with fitting 
 ceremony and circumstance; in the pres- 
 ence of the highest in the land; in the 
 presence of those who make; of those who 
 execute, and of those who interpret the 
 laws ; in the presence of those descendants 
 in whose veins flows Marshall's blood, 
 have the Bar and the Congress of the 
 United States here set up this semblance 
 of his living form, in perpetual memory of 
 the honor, the reverence and the love 
 which the people of his country bear to 
 the great Chief Justice. 
 
 The ceremonies were concluded with a 
 benedidlion by the Rev. Dr. J. G. Arm- 
 strong. 
 
PROCEEDINGS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA BAR 
 
 IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 THE ERECTION 
 
 IN 
 
 THE CITY OF WASHINGTON 
 
 OF A 
 
 MONUMENT 
 
 TO 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall 
 
 1835— 1882. 
 
 79 
 
THE BAR OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 Proceedings, July 7, 1835, on Announcement of the 
 Death of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 At a meeting of the Bar of Philadelphia, held in the Cir- 
 cuit Court Room July 7, 1835, Mr. P. S. Duponceau was ap- 
 pointed Chairman and the Hon. Charles Smith Secretary. 
 The following resolutions were offered by Mr. John Sergeant 
 and unanimously adopted: 
 
 Resolved, That the Bar of the City of Philadelphia partici- 
 pate in the grief which has been caused by the death of the 
 late Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, and 
 desire to unite with their fellow citizens in expressing their 
 deep-felt respect for the memory of that illustrious man. 
 
 Resolved, That while, in common with our fellow citizens, 
 we mourn the great pubHc loss which has been sustained, we 
 feel it to be our privilege as members of a profession so highly 
 honored by the character, talents and services of the deceased, 
 and so long enlightened and directed upon the most moment- 
 ous topics by his profound and patriotic mind, to be permitted 
 in a special manner to acknowledge our obligations and ex- 
 press our reverence for the name of John Marshall; There- 
 fore, 
 
 6 M 81 
 
 \ 
 
82 statue of Chief yiistice Marshall. 
 
 Resolved, That it be recommended to the Bar of tlie United 
 States to co-operate in erecting a monument to his memory 
 at some suitable place in the City of Washington. 
 
 Resolved, That 
 Mr. Rawle, Mr. H. J. Williams, 
 
 Mr. DuPONCEAU, Mr. Kane, 
 
 Mr. Sergeant, Mr. J. M.'Read, 
 
 Mr. BiNNEY, Mr. Dunlap, 
 
 Mr. Chauncey, Mr. D. P. Brown, 
 
 Mr. C. J. Ingersoll, Mr. Norris, 
 
 Mr. P. A. Browne, Mr. W. M. Meredith, 
 
 Mr. Peters, Mr. Jas. C. Biddle, 
 
 Mr. J. S. Smith, Mr. Chester, 
 
 Mr. J. R. Ingersoll, Mr. Gilpin, 
 
 Mr. Wm. Smith, Mr. Cadwalader, 
 
 Mr. Purdon, Mr. C. Ingersoll, 
 
 Mr. Randall, Mr. W. T. Smith, 
 
 Mr. W. Rawle, Jr., Mr. W. B. Reed, and 
 
 Mr. Dallas, Mr. M'Call, 
 
 be a committee on the part of the Bar of Philadelphia to 
 unite with their brethren in other parts of the State and Union 
 in carrying the above resolution into effect. 
 
 Resolved, That the Bar of Philadelphia will wear crape on 
 the left arm for thirty days, and, if consistent with the arrange- 
 ments of the near friends of the deceased, will in a body 
 accompany his remains to the place of embarkation for his 
 native State. 
 
 Resolved, That Judge Baldwin, Mr. Peters, Mr. Sergeant, 
 Mr. Rawle, jr., Mr. T. I. Wharton, and Mr. E. D. Ingra- 
 ham be requested, on the part of the Bar, to accompany the 
 remains of Chief Justice Marshall to the City of Richmond, 
 and to attend the funeral there. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 83 
 
 Mr. E. C. Ingersoll then offered the following resolution, 
 which was unanimously adopted: 
 
 Resolved, That the Chairman and Secretary be a commit- 
 tee to communicate these proceedings and the condolence of 
 the Bar to the family of the deceased. 
 
 Mr. Wharton and Mr. Peters moved that Mr. Sergeant be 
 requested to deliver an eulogium upon the character of the 
 late Chief Justice Marshall before this Bar at some future 
 time, to be designated by himself 
 
 Resolved, That the preceding resolutions be published in 
 the several newspapers of the city. 
 
 MARSHALL MONUMENT. 
 
 At a meeting of the committee appointed by the Bar of 
 Philadelphia on the 7th of July, 1835, held at the Law 
 Library Room on the 31^1 of the same month, 
 
 Peter S. Duponceau, Esq., was appointed chairman, and 
 James C. Biddle, Esq., secretary. 
 
 The following resolutions were adopted: 
 
 Resolved, That Messrs. Duponceau, Sergeant, Binney, 
 Chauncey, and J. R. Ingersoll be a subcommittee whose 
 duty it shall be — 
 
 1. To proceed immediately to collect subscriptions for the 
 monument from the Bar of Philadelphia. 
 
 2. To cause subscriptions to be collected from the Bar of 
 the other parts of Pennsylvania. 
 
 3. To promote subscriptions by the members of the Bar 
 throughout the United States. 
 
§4 Statue of Chief fustice Marshall. 
 
 4. To correspond with such committees and individuals 
 and members of the profession throughout the United States 
 as may be authorized or disposed to co-operate with us in 
 the proposed object. 
 
 5. To confer, on the part of the Bar of Philadelphia, with 
 such committees or individuals as may be appointed or 
 authorized to confer with them, on the subject of their 
 appointment or matters connected therewith. 
 
 6. To adopt such other measures as may seem to them 
 expedient and proper for furthering the contemplated purpose. 
 
 Resolved, That desiring to make the subscription as exten- 
 sive as possible, and to avoid inconvenience to those who 
 may be wilHng to unite with them, it is the wish of th& com- 
 mittee that individual subscriptions should be moderate, and 
 that the required amount may be made up by the number of 
 contributors, rather than by the magnitude of particular 
 donations, so that the monument may truly be the work of 
 the Bar of the United States, and an enduring evidence of 
 their veneration for the memory of the illustrious deceased. 
 
 Resolved, That it is the desire of the Bar of Philadelphia 
 that all who may contribute may have a voice in selecting 
 the plan to be adopted, and at a suitable time arrangements 
 will be made to give them an opportunity, by their delegates, 
 to take a part in the selection. 
 
 Resolved, That before a plan can be adopted it is neces- 
 sary to know the extent of the means that will be furnished, 
 and therefore it is earnestly requested that subscriptions may 
 be collected and forwarded with the utmost possible dispatch. 
 
 Resolved, That Samuel Jaudon, Esq., Cashier of the Bank 
 of the United States, be the Treasurer of the Marshall 
 Monument Fund, to whom all moneys collected are to be 
 forwarded. 
 
 Resolved, That we sincerely hope that our brethren through- 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 85 
 
 out the United States will immediately and actively exert 
 themselves, within their respective spheres, to collect and 
 forward subscriptions, in such a manner as may seem to 
 them best. 
 
 Resolved, That the subcommittee be instructed to receive 
 no subscription from any member of the Bar of Philadelphia 
 exceeding ten dollars, and to inform the members of the Bar 
 throughout the United States that this regulation has been 
 adopted here. 
 
 Resolved, That the subcommittee be authorized to add tO' 
 their number, provided the whole do not exceed nine, and 
 to supply vacancies in their body. 
 
 Resolved, That the editors of the newspapers throughout 
 the United States be requested to publish these proceedings. 
 PETER S. DUPONCEAU, 
 
 Chairman. 
 
 J. C. BiDDLE, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
 CIRCULAR 
 
 Issued by the Committee of the Bar of Philadelphia shortly after 
 the death of Chief Justice Marshall. 
 
 MARSHALL MONUMENT. 
 
 Philadelphia, \oth August, 1835. 
 Sir: The subject on which we have the honor of address- 
 ing you will, we are confident, require no apology on our 
 part. It needs only to be mentioned to excite in you a feel- 
 ing responsive to that with which we are impressed. 
 
86 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 The death of the late Chief Justice Marshall having 
 taken place in our city, the Bar of Philadelphia lost no time 
 in assembling in order to deliberate on the honors to be paid 
 to the memory of the illustrious deceased. Among other 
 things, it was "Resolved, That it be recommended to the Bar 
 of the United States to co-operate in erecting a monument at 
 some suitable place in the city of Washington"; and a com- 
 mittee of thirty members was appointed " to unite with their 
 brethren in other parts of the State and Union to carry that 
 resolution into effect." 
 
 Owing to the indisposition of the chairman of that com- 
 mittee, some delay occurred in calling it together. The same 
 cause, however, continuing longer than was expected, the com- 
 mittee met on the 31st of last month, and passed the resolu- 
 tions hereunto annexed,' by which you will be informed of 
 their general views, and of the authority under which we act. 
 
 The object of this letter is to solicit your earnest and active 
 co-operation in this great design. We have reason to believe 
 that the members of our profession throughout the Union are 
 in general well disposed towards its execution. We have re- 
 ceived offers of co-operation from different States, and from 
 some of the most distant from us and from each other, as 
 well by letters addressed to us by committees of the Bars of 
 particular districts as by the publication of the proceedings 
 of others in the newspapers. Our hopes of success are 
 sanguine, and we trust will not be disappointed. 
 
 Among the questions which have been asked of us, inquiry 
 has particularly been made as to what extent and in what 
 mode it was proposed to raise funds for the contemplated 
 purpose. As to the extent or amount of the funds to be 
 raised, you will easily understand that it is a subject on which 
 we cannot give a positive answer, as it will depend on the 
 zeal, the activity, and the liberality of our brethren in the 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 87 
 
 different parts of the United States. When we consider the 
 number of the members of the Bar throughout the Union, 
 and, still more, when we reflect on the strong feeling which 
 they have always evinced for the honor of the profession and 
 the glory of those who have contributed to its illustration, 
 we cannot entertain the least doubt but that a suflicient sum 
 may and will be raised to defray the expense of a monument 
 worthy of ourselves and of the illustrious man whose name 
 and fame it is intended to perpetuate; and in any event we 
 cannot suppose but that enough will be collected for a monu- 
 ment which can never be humble when deriving its splendor 
 from the name to which it will be attached. But it is our 
 earnest wish that it may be such as to reflect honor on the 
 Bar of the United States. 
 
 With regard to the mode of collecting funds, we have con- 
 sidered that all the members of our profession are not equally 
 favored with the gifts of fortune; we have had particularly in 
 view the younger members, the hopes of our country, whose 
 zeal and ardor, we know, are not inferior to those of their 
 senior brethren; therefore, in the subscriptions of our own 
 State the general committee thought proper to recommend, 
 and in our immediate district to establish, as far as could be 
 done, a very moderate scale, by limiting the amount of each 
 subscription so as not to exceed ten dollars, although a less 
 sum will not be refused. In doing so, however, we have not 
 meant to exclude individual liberality; it will be in the power 
 of those who can afford and are willing to contribute beyond 
 the amount stated to indulge their generous spirit, either 
 individually or by some concert among themselves, transmit- 
 ting the amount immediately to the general treasurer, who 
 will be hereinafter mentioned; but the subscription is limited, 
 as we have said, to ten dollars, a sum which we believe there 
 will be but few incapable of contributing. 
 
88 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 This is the mode we have adopted for the Bar of our own 
 city and county, leaving to other Bars to adopt such system 
 as they may think proper. We have desired that the money 
 should be paid at the time of subscribing, and so far this, our 
 request, has been complied with. We are happy to inform 
 you that the subscription here is going on in a manner quite 
 commensurate with our expectations. 
 
 As soon as we shall have collected a sufficient sum to 
 enable us to form a correct idea of the expense to which we 
 may venture to go for carrying our design into execution, we 
 shall lose no time, with the assent of the general committee, 
 in preparing a suitable plan, and making the contemplated 
 arrangements, to give to the contributors an opportunity, by 
 their delegates, to take part in the selection. 
 
 Conceiving it necessary that the money to be raised should 
 be kept together on the same spot, and placed in the hands 
 of a person of acknowledged responsibility, we have thought 
 that we could not do better than to appoint for our treasurer 
 Samuel Jaudon, Esq., the cashier of the Bank of the United 
 States, whose name and character are known throughout the 
 Union. We hope that the moneys collected or otherwise 
 contributed will be transmitted to him as soon as possible. 
 
 It may not be improper to add that the designation of 
 those who are invited to contribute is to be understood in the 
 most liberal sense, embracing all who have been of the pro- 
 fession, though now retired, or filling judicial stations, or en- 
 gaged in other pursuits; nor do we wish to exclude prothon- 
 otaries, sheriffs, and other officers intimately connected with 
 the judiciary department,' and entitled to be considered as our 
 associates. Should there be any who cannot conveniently 
 subscribe, they may transmit their contributions to the treas- 
 urer before mentioned. 
 
 Thus, sir, we have stated to you the whole of our views. 
 
statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 89 
 
 and have entered into details as far as we have thought 
 we might do so with propriety. We now earnestly beg that 
 you will use your utmost endeavors, and those of your friends, 
 to promote the great object which is the occasion of this ad- 
 dress to you. We hope and wish for the co-operation of 
 every State, Territory and District, and of every county in 
 the Union. Not being acquainted with all the gentlemen 
 whose assistance may be essential, we have to request that 
 you will communicate the substance of this letter, in such 
 manner as you may deem best, to the members of the Bar 
 of your State. If you should have any communications to 
 make to us, please to direct them to William B. Reed, Esq., 
 who acts as secretary to this committee. They shall be 
 respectfully attended to. 
 
 We have the honor to be, with great respect, sir, your 
 most obedient, humble servants, 
 
 PETER S. DUPONCEAU, 
 JOHN SERGEANT, 
 HORACE BINNEY, 
 CHARLES CHAUNCEY, 
 J. R. INGERSOLL, 
 THOMAS DUNLAP, 
 WILLIAM B. REED, 
 PETER McCALL, 
 
 Committee. 
 
90 Statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 List of subscriptions to the Marshall Monument Fund. 
 Pennsylvania - $1,292 
 
 Richmond, Virginia 
 
 215 
 
 Norfolk, Virginia 
 
 80 
 
 New Hampshire 
 
 60 
 
 Vermont 
 
 20 
 
 Worcester, Massachusetts 
 
 160 
 
 New Haven, Connecticut - 
 
 95 
 
 Utica, New York 
 
 100 
 
 New York City 
 
 ID 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 
 10 
 
 Raleigh and Elizabeth City, North Carolina - 
 
 130 
 
 Charleston, South CaroHna 
 
 180 
 
 Augusta, Georgia 
 
 110 
 
 Saint Louis, Missouri 
 
 95 
 
 Total 
 
 2>557 
 
 PROCEEDINGS IN 1882. 
 
 To the Honorable the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, No. 
 1, of the County of Philadelphia : 
 
 The petition of the undersigned showeth as follows: 
 They are the sole survivors of certain members of the Bar 
 of Philadelphia who, in the summer of the year 1835, sub- 
 scribed certain amounts for the purpose of erecting, at some 
 suitable place in the city of Washington, a monument in 
 memory of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, who had then just died in this 
 city. The exhibits annexed hereto show particularly the pro- 
 ceedings which then took place, and the list of subscribers to 
 
statue of Chief justice Marsha//. 91 
 
 the fund. It did not reach the sum of three thousand dol- 
 lars, and the amount was entirely inadequate for the pur- 
 pose desired. 
 
 It was, therefore, carefully invested and reinvested in the 
 loan of the city of Philadelphia, at first in the names of 
 "Horace Binney, Joseph R. Ingersoll, William B. Reed, 
 Peter McCall, and Job R. Tyson, trustees of the Marshall 
 Memorial Fund," and later in the names of " Horace Bin- 
 ney, Wilham B. Reed, and Peter McCall, surviving trustees 
 of the Marshall Memorial Fund." Of these the said 
 Peter McCall was the survivor, and upon his death his ex- 
 ecutors, John and Richard M. Cadwalader, found among the 
 assets of their testator the said certificates of loan, and cash 
 being interest collected on said loan, the whole amounting 
 in value to about twenty thousand dollars. 
 
 At the stated meeting of The Law Association of Philadel- 
 phia held on the 5th day of December, 1881, of which a 
 copy of the proceedings is also annexed, a committee was 
 appointed for the purpose of carrying out the objects for 
 which 'the said fund was subscribed, consisting of 
 George Sharswood, 
 Wayne MacVeagh, 
 John Cadwalader, 
 William White Wiltbank, 
 Charles Chauncey Binney ; as also 
 George W. Biddle, Chancellor, and 
 William Henry Rawle, Vice-Chancellor, 
 
 Of the Law Association. 
 
 The undersigned show to the Court that they are interested 
 in the proper application of the said fund, and pray the Court 
 to appoint the said committee trustees thereof, and to author- 
 ize and empower them to receive the same from the said 
 
92 statue of Chief yustice Marshall. 
 
 executors, or the said city, to give all proper acquittances 
 and discharges therefor, and to apply the same to the pur- 
 poses for which it was subscribed. 
 And they will ever pray, &c. 
 
 GEO. SHARSWOOD. 
 
 EDWARD OLMSTED. 
 
 C. INGERSOLL. 
 
 H. CRAMOND. 
 
 JOHN L. NEWBOLD. 
 
 WILLIAM DUANE. 
 
 Decree. 
 
 And now, this 28th day of January, A. D. 1882, the within 
 petition having been read and filed, the Court do grant the 
 prayer thereof, and do appoint the said George Sharswood, 
 Wayne MacVeagh, John Cadwalader, William White Wilt- 
 bank, Charles Chauncey Binney, George W. Biddle and 
 WiUiam Henry Rawle,Trustees of the said Marshall Me- 
 morial Fund, without security being required to be given by 
 them, and do authorize and empower the said Trustees to 
 receive the same from the executors of Peter McCall, de- 
 ceased, or the city of Philadelphia, to give all proper acquit- 
 tances and discharges therefor, and to apply the same to the 
 purposes for which the said fund was subscribed as appearing 
 in the exhibits annexed to the said petition, and according to 
 their true intent and meaning. 
 
 And it is further ordered that after said trust shall have 
 been carried out the said Trustees do make return to this 
 Court of their action in the premises. 
 
 Per Curiam.