Marshall, it is true, was a Federalist, but not in the sense that Hamilton was. He was not a liberal constructionist, as was Hamil ton, nor was he a strict constructionist, as was Jefferson. He believed that the Constitution must be carefully examined to ascertain if any particular power was therein given, that upon him who asserted the existence of the power rested the burden of proof, but that if such power was established the Constitu tion gave all those incidental powers which are necessary to its complete and efficient execution.1 IN THE GKNERAL ASSEMBLY OF VIRGINIA.
While he never sought public office, he was often forced by a sense of duty to enter the public service. Repeatedly at this period of his life, when he had left by choice a public career to devote himself to the law, he was as often compelled by the call of duty to enter the political arena to battle for principles and policies, the disregard or rejection of which he thought would imperil the liberty and happiness of the country. The convictions he had already formed afterwards made him a stalwart Federalist. •As early as 1782 he was elected from Fauquier County to the General Assembly of the State, and again in 1784, and for the third time in 1787, when he was sent from Henrico County, where he then resided, near Richmond. The main questions which were at that time agitating the public mind con cerned the proper relations between the State and the Federal Government and the duty of both to the soldiers of the Revolution. When Marshall saw his old comrades in arms unpaid, reduced in many cases to beg gary, and threatening to become an element of danger to the country for whose inde pendence they had fought so bravely: when he saw a large party in his State bent on bringing into still greater contempt the all but helpless central government, ignoring its requisitions, disregarding the obligations of 1 Honorable Horace G. Platt, of San Francisco.
its treaties, and imperiling all that had been gained by the great war, he exerted all his powers, on the hustings and in the legis lative councils, to strengthen the central government and to persuade his State to perform her obligations to her citizen sol diers and to the old confederation. After her reluctant acceptance of the Con stitution, the State of Virginia regarded the new central power with feelings of jealousy and hostility, which she evinced by unre lenting opposition to the administration even of Washington and by the advocacy of every measure or policy which would tend to em barrass the new government or endanger its success. Convinced as he was that the lib erty and happiness of the country would not survive a second break down of the central government, Marshall again gave up the pri vate life he coveted to serve two more terms in the State Legislature, where he contended strenuously, but in vain, against the antiFederalist sentiment of his State.1 IN THE VIRGINIA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: 1788.
Monday, June 2, 1788. found the little city of Richmond, on the James, all astir. The streets for that day were crowded with eager men hastening towards the Capitol; hand some equipages laden with Virginia's fair est daughters lined the main thoroughfares leading to the city. A stranger standing on one of the hills of the city, looking in any direction, would have noticed clouds of dust rising in the distance from tire county roads. The roads, not railroads, leading into Rich mond were lined with travellers approaching the city — some in gigs, some in phaetons, and many on horseback with saddlebags as their Saratogas. Nor were they only those who expected to participate in the proceed ings of the convention. Distinguished strangers from other States — planters from every portion of the Commonwealth—states men, though planters; while the ambitious youth from its remotest corners was eagerly 1 Honorable Joseph P. Blair.
