[1236] Niles, XXVI, 54-62.

[1237] For example, steamboat construction on the Ohio alone almost doubled in a single year, and quadrupled within two years. (See table in Meyer-MacGill: _History of Transportation in the United States_, etc., 108.)

[1238] 1 Hopkins's _Chancery Reports_, 151.

[1239] _Ib._ 198.

[1240] 3 Cowen, 716-17.

[1241] 3 Cowen, 731-34.

[1242] _Ib._ 750.

[1243] _Ib._

[1244] 3 Cowen, 753-54.

[1245] This bill had been proposed by Senator Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky at the previous session (_Annals_, 18th Cong. 1st Sess, 575) as an amendment to a bill reported from the Judiciary Committee by Senator Martin Van Buren (_ib._ 336).

[1246] _Debates_, 18th Cong. 2d Sess. 527-33.

[1247] _Ib._ 588.

[1248] _Ib._ 609.

[1249] _Ib._ 614.

After considerable wrangling, the bill was reported favorably from the Judiciary Committee (_ib._ 630), but too late for further action at that session.

[1250] _Debates_, 19th Cong. 1st Sess. 845.

[1251] Four days after the House adopted Webster's bill (_ib._ 1149), he wrote his brother: "The judiciary bill will probably pa.s.s the Senate, as it left our House. There will be no difficulty in finding perfectly safe men for the new appointments. The contests on those const.i.tutional questions in the West have made men fit to be judges." (Webster to his brother, Jan. 29, 1826, _Priv. Corres_.: Webster, I, 401.)

[1252] _Debates_, 19th Cong. 1st Sess. 417-18.

[1253] _Ib._ 419.

[1254] _Ib._ 420-21.

[1255] _Debates_, 19th Cong. 1st Sess. 423-24.

[1256] _Ib._ 436.

[1257] _Ib._ 442. Rowan's amendment was defeated (_ib._ 463). Upon disagreements between the Senate and House as to the number and arrangement of districts and circuits, the entire measure was lost. In the House it was "indefinitely postponed" by a vote of 99 to 89 (_ib._ 2648); and in the Senate the bill was finally laid on the table (_ib._ 784).

[1258] 12 Wheaton, 420.

[1259] Taney, leading counsel for Maryland, had just been appointed Attorney-General of that State, and soon afterwards was made Attorney-General of the United States. He succeeded Marshall as Chief Justice. (See _infra_, 460.)

[1260] Johnson was only thirty-one years old at this time, but already a leader of the Baltimore bar and giving sure promise of the distinguished career he afterward achieved.

[1261] 12 Wheaton, 436.

[1262] 12 Wheaton, 437-39.

[1263] _Ib._ 441.

[1264] _Ib._ 441-42.

[1265] 12 Wheaton, 443-44.

[1266] See _infra_, 536-38.

[1267] 12 Wheaton, 448-49.

[1268] 5 Howard, 575.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUPREME CONSERVATIVE

If a judge becomes odious to the people, let him be removed.

(William Branch Giles.)

Our wisest friends look with gloom to the future. (Joseph Story.)

I have always thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and a sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary. (Marshall.)

"I was in a very great crowd the other evening at M^{rs} Adams' drawing room, but I see very few persons there whom I know & fewer still in whom I take any interest. A person as old as I am feels that his home is his place of most comfort, and his old wife the companion in the world in whose society he is most happy.

"I dined yesterday with Mr. Randolph. He is absorbed in the party politics of the day & seems as much engaged in them as he was twenty five years past. It is very different with me. I long to leave this busy bustling scene & to return to the tranquility of my family & farm.

Farewell my dearest Polly. That Heaven may bless you is the unceasing prayer of your ever affectionate

"J. MARSHALL."[1269]

This letter to his ageing and afflicted wife, written in his seventy-second year, reveals Marshall's state of mind as he entered the final decade of his life. While the last of his history-making and nation-building opinions had been delivered, the years still before him were to be crowded with labor as arduous and scenes as picturesque as any during his career on the Bench. It was to be a period of disappointment and grief, but also of that supreme reward for sound and enduring work which comes from recognition of the general and lasting benefit of that work and of the greatness of mind and n.o.bility of character of him who performed it.

For twenty years the Chief Justice had not voted. The last ballot he had cast was against the reelection of Jefferson in 1804. From that time forward until 1828, he had kept away from the polls. In the latter year he probably voted for John Quincy Adams, or rather against Andrew Jackson, who, as Marshall thought, typified the recrudescence of that unbridled democratic spirit which he so increasingly feared and distrusted.[1270]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN MARSHALL]

Yet, even in so grave a crisis as Marshall believed the Presidential election of 1828 to be, he shrank from the appearance of partisanship.

The _Marylander_, a Baltimore Democratic paper, published an item quoting Marshall as having said: "I have not voted for twenty years; but I shall consider it a solemn duty I owe my country to go to the polls and vote at the next presidential election--for should Jackson be elected, I shall look upon the government as virtually dissolved."[1271]