As to which one of four or five of Marshall's opinions are the greatest, much diversity of judgment exists among those lawyers best fitted to decide. The view point as to this question is, as in regard to other questions, most important. The possible, if not probable, effect upon the institutions of our country, if the decision had been the reverse of what it was, is always of prime importance, and with this contingency in mind it is probable that the case of McCulloch vs. the State of Maryland stands in front rank of those cases which are really the bulwark of the Republic. The case involved the right of the State to tax a branch of the Bank of the United States, by requiring it to use in its issue of notes stamped paper of the State. It was not sought in the act of legislature to tax the property of the Bank directly, but in the requirement, that it should use only stamped paper furnished by the State, this result was indirectly reached.

The first and leading question was, as to the power of the Federal Government to establish and incorporate a Bank of the United States, and this power Judge Marshall, by a most luminous train of reasoning, clear and pellucid as a mountain stream, found to exist, and that it was a necessary adjunct to the life of the Nation.

Having found the power to create included in the Constitution, on the second proposition or question, as to the right of the State to tax the Bank's operations or franchises, the judgment of the Court was that such right did not exist, for it was said in language easily understood by lawyers and laymen, the power to tax included the power to destroy, and the power to destroy might render useless the power to create. It has been declared by Chancellor Kent and Professor James B. Thayer that in no other case has the supremacy of the National Constitution been declared in so clear and convincing a manner as in McCulloch vs. the State of Maryland.

The most widely known, to the people generally, of all of John Marshall's decisions is that of the Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward. The fact that the fortunes of, at that time, a comparatively small college were the foundation for one of the most famous decisions in American jurisprudence, has invested the case and its result with an almost romantic interest, and

interwoven with the history of the case is the fact that in presenting it before the Supreme Court Daniel Webster, the greatest constitutional lawyer of the times, made one of his most impressive and powerful arguments. The incidents attending Mr. Webster's argument, the reference to the college as being his own alma mater, and the visible effect upon the Chief Justice and his associates of the argument and its eloquent peroration are familiar to us all. It is one of the glories of our profession that such a cause could have such an advocate as Daniel Webster and such a Judge to render the decision as John Marshall.

The pivotal facts upon which the case turned are briefly these: A charter had been granted by the Crown of Great Britain to the Trustees of Dartmouth College in 1769. After the Revolution the Legislature sought to alter the charter by increasing the number of trustees, that the trustees should be appointed by the Governor of the State, and these and some other attempted changes and amendments to the charter the former trustees, appointed under the first charter, declined to accept. Woodward, the defendant, had been Secretary and Treasurer of the college, but had been removed. After the attempted changes in the charter he was appointed to fill the same offices under the newly appointed Board of Trustees. An action of trover was brought for the corporate seal, the charter, and records of the college by the former Board of Trustees, and the plaintiffs were defeated and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The vital questions in the case were, whether or not the charter which had been granted by Great Britain when the College was founded was a contract, and if so, whether the act of the Legislature of New Hampshire seeking to amend and change it was void under the clause of the Constitution prohibiting the impairment of contracts. The opinion of the Court held the affirmative on each of these propositions, and established the sacredness of contracts under the supreme law of the land. It is impossible to over estimate the importance of the decision as to the particular matter with which it deals, and the principle of law thus established has never since that time been doubted.

One of the noticeable features of these decisions is that in two of them no authority was cited, whatever. In the Marbury case,

two citations were given by the Chief Justice. Otherwise the decisions were the result of that reasoning power which proceeded straight and unerring as a ray of sunlight on its mission.

I cannot and will not detain you longer with reference to these landmarks of our country's liberty and greatness. At the right time in our history and by the right man were these and other principles of free government established and the peace, tranquillity, and happiness of these States established.

In the old world a conquering general was frequently loaded with the gifts of a grateful people. John Marshall has given to this nation more in substance, in stability, and power than could be gained by territorial aggression, which is often the result of bloodshed and war. He died at the age of eighty years, the same quiet, unassuming man he had been through life.

No writer has given a stronger and more truthful estimate of his work than James Bryce, in his work, "The American Commonwealth', when he says:

"His work of building up and working out the Constitution was accomplished, not so much by the decisions he gave as by the judgments in which he expounded the principles of these decisions, judgments which for their philosophical breadth, the luminous exactness of their reasoning, and the fine political sense which pervades them, have never been surpassed and rarely equalled by the most famous jurists of modern Europe or of ancient Rome. He grasped with extraordinary force and clearness the cardinal idea that the creation of a national government implies the grant of all such subsidiary powers as are requisite to the effectuation of its main powers and purposes, but he developed and applied this idea with so much prudence and sobriety, never treading on purely political ground, never indulging the temptation to theorize, but content to follow out as a lawyer the consequences of legal principles, that the Constitution seemed not so much to rise under his hands to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled by him till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfection of the form which its framers had designed. That admirable flexibility and capacity for growth which characterize it beyond all other rigid or supreme constitutions, is largely due to him, yet not more to his courage than to his caution."

The problems of government of the United States which demand solution keep pace with its material progress and development. Its increase of population, of wealth, of power and influence among the nations of the earth, has never been equaled since governments were organized. The recent past has given occasion for momentous decisions of the Supreme Court to be

pronounced. We occasionally see statements in the public press to the effect that certain cases are pending in that Court involving consequences as grave as any decision of that Court in its past history. Such statements are, for the most part, gross exaggeration and yet, while it is undoubtedly true that decisions of that Court, some of which have been referred to in this address, did give the Union strength and stability that it could not have gained from any other source, this is also true that in the developing history of the Republic problems will be solved by that Court as important to its future stability and progress as any that have been decided in the past.

If the time shall ever come that the safety and integrity of this Union of States shall depend upon the decision of a question thus vital in its nature, no greater gift could be vouchsafed by Divine Providence than that it shall be pronounced by a Chief Justice with such singleness of purpose, such purity of intention, and such unsurpassed wisdom as John Marshall.

THE PRESIDENT: The next paper upon the program is one entitled "The Law," to be given by Hon. W. R. Lewis, of Monte

zuma.

JUDGE W. R. LEWIS: Some years ago Justice Deemer called attention to the value of uniformity in the law and its application, and to the importance of a system of laws built upon foundation principles rather than a series of reports of individual causes, decided on the basis of exact justice in every particular case, and thereby suggested the effort involved in this paper.

THE LAW

We talk of laws made by man, but this is a mere convenience to enable us the more readily to communicate with and understand one another. All law is from God. It is eternal and immutable. With every thing, animate or inanimate, that was made, there was created integral with it, as an essential part and quality of it, its law. This cannot be changed. It it could be, the creature itself would be changed or destroyed, man himself with all the complications of body, mind, and soul, not excepted. True, in his case, being endowed with intelligence, he has the

power to ignore the law of his being and treat it as if it was not. When he has done this, however, he has not changed the law, but simply brought upon himself the penalties for its infraction. When God said to Adam, "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die", He did no more than to warn him of the law that was in him. From that day to this God has striven with man to prevail upon him, if possible, to recognize the law and its immutability. This has been the purpose of the institution of governments amongst men; of the institution of legislatures and courts and of this Association; and it is the purpose, a little mite, of this paper. As soon as we recognize the fact that all the laws necessary to assure the substantial happiness of the race are ready made to our hands and that all that we have power to do is to discover and write them in our own appropriate language, reading alike to all men, we shall have accomplished one of the necessary features of our task. We should, probably, not differ as to the truth of the proposition, that man was not created with the heart of the murderer, adulterer, thief, or perjurer. Nor would we disagree on the proposition that no man guilty of any one of these crimes could be happy. Neither would any of us propose a law declaring any of these crimes righteous. Substantial happiness would be absolutely impossible in any community that encouraged the commission of any one of them.

Then again when we have gone outside the realm of morals we find the same inexorable laws. We can no more fix the price of a perch of stone, by legislation, than we can fix the weight of it by legislation. We went over this ground, in the fight over the questions in "Sixteen to One", and settled the whole matter so thoroughly, in favor of the proposition that all the laws involved were God given and beyond the power of man, that we have almost forgotten what the expression meant. But we need not further extend the discussion on this point, as I am sure a little sober reflection will find us in accord on the proposition that every created thing has its law, and throughout all the field of human life not one can be found which is subject to change by man. I have heard it suggested that the Supreme Court ought to be excepted from this statement, but I verily believe, that generally, it regards itself as subject to the law, as well as other folks.