The absurd eulogium which is habitually passed upon Marshall is that he made a nation of the United States. A franker avowal, but with the same meaning, is that he strengthened the government; while latterly the whole significance of these utterances is unmasked in the bold acclaim that he was the first man to take up the march of the constitution. He is praised as having written implied powers in the constitution, and history has been manipulated to establish a sequence between his decision in McCulloch vs. Maryland and the battle of Gettysburg. But, while a certain school of political thought has insisted that the victory at Gettysburg was the approval of arms of that decision and that implied powers may be written into the constitution whenever desirable, and that even the constitution may be disregarded in the interests of government, they should not forget that the battle of Bunker hill decided that there shall be neither kings nor monarchists anywhere in America.

Then, with all due respect to the private character, public services and known abilities of John Marshall, why apotheosize his memory at this time? In this year the declaration of independence is characterized as a revolutionary pronunciamento incapable of syllogistic proof. The constitution is ignored. A president is governing millions of people outside of the constitution, admits that he is doing so and says that it is proper to do so. Is it not an additional comment of the same purport upon the spirit of the time to flood the country with panegyrics upon the great expositor of implied powers? If these things find warrant in the principles of Jefferson, Story, Adams,

Madison, Randolph or Paine and not in Marshall, why not celebrate one of the former? For, rightfully considered, Marshall occupies a mere secondary place among the great men of this country.

Hamilton possessed a more daring and original genius, but a cabinet report on a national bank lacks the force of a supreme court decision finding its charter to be constitutional. Madison excelled him in learning, but Madison was in favor of a constitutional march only by a constitutional amendment. Franklin's mind was more versatile, but Franklin, though dissatisfied with the monarchial faults of the constitution, acquiesced in it when the majority favored it for the good it contained and the peace of the country. Jefferson towered above him in all that goes to constitute. the statesman, humanity, vast scholarship, deep insight and grasp of principles, but Jefferson was a friend to the constitution, not as those who became its enemies when they could not use it. Not even Marshall's warmest admirers claim he was a man of more than mediocre juridical learning. As a judge he was inferior to many of his associates in scholarship, while his successor, Taney, was a more brilliant example of judicial genius.

But after all such discriminations as these how does the judicial office, however capably filled, compare with those efforts of ampler genius which uplift and enlighten the race of men? Marshall possessed that cast of mind which would have won him success in Scottish metaphysics exemplified by the writings of Dugald Stewart. But as Taine has well said that the English language has known no metaphysician,

Marshall's mental cast was of that inferior order which gave him mere ingenuity in sophisticating legal questions to a preconceived idea. His habit of covering the whole field of discussion in long obiter dicta when the case turned upon a point of jurisdiction was not only disingenuous, but has actually corrupted all federal decisions to this day with the same defect.

In Marbury vs. Madison, where the sole question was whether the supreme court had jurisdiction of the writ of mandamus under the constitution to compel Madison to deliver certain commissions, Marshall treated the whole question, finding that the commissions were valid, although never delivered, and then decided at last that the court had no jurisdiction to do anything. It was this course in the Dred-Scott case in which the court discussed every political and historical aspect of slavery, only to hold that Dred Scott was a slave and could not sue in the United States courts, that rocked the republic to its foundations and caused Lincoln to say that the people are masters of both congress and courts, not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow those who pervert the constitution.

But it is because Marshall's career subserves a desire as old as the declaration of independence that his memory is nourished to the neglect of many great men who stood opposed to his principles. From documents and diaries, from historical evidence not to be doubted, there has existed in this country from the close of the revolutionary war a powerful party fortified by intelligence, respectability and wealth and sleepless in its efforts to monarchize the republic. It

is not pretended that this party desired a king. But a king is not necessary to monarchial success.

Where the elective principle is wormed out, where the superior branch of the legislature is independent of the people, where the executive is independent of the people and the judiciary sits above impeachment, where the constitution, whose very object was to prevent by its limitations a perversion of the republic, is treated with contempt or amended by judicial construction and not by the people, as it provides, and where these functionaries of government legislate upon the theories of inequality before the law, in that manner building up a powerful aristocracy, which uses its force to continue these policies, there the monarchial principle has been established. It was for these things by temperament, by conduct and by judicial decision that Marshall stood.

If the declaration of independence was a mere revolutionary manifesto then it only accomplished our emancipation from the government of Great Britain. But if it was a statement of political truths applicable to all men at all times then it divorced the American people forever from all monarchial principles. It became the soul of the constitution, just as it animated the thought of Madison and the great leaders of liberty in the constitutional convention. But the pure intent of the father was corrupted by the illegitimate reasoning of Hamilton, just as amid the swell of a triumphant chorus one discordant blast may destroy the entire harmony. And when he had once introduced the voice of monarchy into the theme the best that could be done with the unfitting tone was to tem

per it as much as possible to the main key. The absurd electoral college was one of the results of this endeavor. The venerable Franklin just before signing the constitution sadly declared that it was perhaps the best constitution that could be evolved from the materials at hand and that the government could only, like all others before it, end in despotism.

When it is remembered that Hamilton frankly avowed monarchial principles and that in numerous letters and declarations he purposed under the guise of implied powers to create a government different from that created by the constitution, and when it is remembered in this connection that Marshall as a judge completed his work by validating Hamiltonian legislation, the component parts of a scheme to monarchize the republic are brought to view. It was by the funded debt, the tariff, the United States bank and internal improvements that the constitution was to be destroyed in its own name. For when it was objected that the constitution should not have a permanent debt Hamilton illogically replied that the people should not repudiate the price of liberty. When it was urged that the constitution did not warrant the exaction of toll for the benefit of merchants Hamilton with accustomed sophistry replied that American labor must be protected. When the United States bank was opposed as unconstitutional Hamilton pointed to the war clause in the constitution and appealed to the war spirit of the people. When internal improvements were resisted on the ground that they were unconstitutional and furnished the means of general corruption Hamilton asked if the people did not