offence to leading Democrats. Jefferson spoke of the work as "the five-volumed libel;" "the party diatribe of Marshall." 1 IN THE VIRGINIA STATE CONVENTION: 1829.
At the time of becoming a member of that convention, Marshall wrote to Mr. Justice Story an amusingly apologetic letter, dated Richmond, June 11, 1829, in which he said: "I am almost ashamed of my weakness and irresolution, when I tell you that I am a member of our convention. I was in earnest when I told you that I would not come into that body, and really believed that I should adhere to that determination; but I have acted like a girl addressed by a gentleman she does not positively dislike, but is un willing to marry. She is sure to yield to the advice and persuasion of her friends." I assure you I regret being a member, and could I have obeyed the dictate's of my own judgment I should not have been one. I am conscious that I cannot perform a part I should wish to take in a popular assembly; but I am like Molière's 'Médecin Malgré Lui.'" Mr. Grigsby tells us that "he spoke but seldom in the convention, and always with deliberation," and that "an intense earnest ness was the leading trait of his manner." Some remarks of his on the judicial tenure may fitly be quoted, without comment. Strenuously upholding, as essential to the independence of the judiciary, the tenure of office during good behavior, he said: "I have grown old in the opinion that there is nothing more dear to Virginia, or ought to be dearer to her statesmen, and that the best interests of our country are secured by it. Advert, Sir, to the duties of a Judge. He has to pass between the government and the man whom that government is prosecuting; between the most powerful individual in the community, and the poorest and most un popular." "Is it not, to the last degree, im1 Professor Jeremiah Smith, of the Law School of Har vard University.
portant that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his con science? You do not allow a man to per form the duties of a juryman or a Judge, if be has one dollar of interest in the matter to be decided, and will you allow a Judge to give a decision when his office may depend upon it? When his decision may offend a powerful and influential man? "And will you make me believe that if the manner of his decision may affect the tenure of that office, the man himself will not be affected by that consideration?" "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 judici ary." The question of the weight, as a precedent, of the act of Congress of 1802, abolishing the Circuit Judgeships created by Congress in 1801, having been discussed by other members of the convention, and Chief Justice Marshall's opinion having been requested, he said, "that it was with great, very great re pugnance, that he rose to utter a syllable upon the subject. His reluctance to do so was very great, indeed; and he had, through out the previous debates on this subject, most carefully avoided expressing any opin ion whatever upon what had been called a construction of the Constitution of the United States by the act of Congress of 1802. He should now, as far as possible, continue to avoid expressing any opinion on that act „of Congress. There was something in his situation which ought to induce him to avoid doing so. He would go no farther than to say that he did not conceive the Constitution to have been at all definitely expounded by a single act of Congress. He should not meddle with the question, whether a course of successive legislation should or should not be held as a final exposition of it: but he would say this — that a single act of Con gress, unconnected with any other act by ! the other departments of the Federal Gov
