John Marshall. and profound wisdom. In judicial acquire ments he was not the equal of some of his contemporaries. He was not what is termed a learned man, and he had none of the arts of an advocate. He relied upon the original powers of his mind, and not upon knowledge gained from others. He worked out the great problems of constitutional jurispru dence as Newton worked out the great prob lems of natural science. He mastered new subjects by his powers of analysis and intui tive perception of the truth. "He seized, as it were, by intuition," says Judge Story, "the very spirit of judicial doctrines, though cased up in the armor of centuries, and he discussed authorities as if the very minds of the Judges themselves stood disembodied before him." 1 He had other first rate judicial qualities. He courted, he demanded, argument. He had the aid of the ablest lawyers in what Mr. Phelps, himself a great lawyer, calls the Augustan age of the American Bar. He had. in a degree often remarked, a patience which, as Mr. Binncy expressed it, was only exhausted when patience ceased to be a vir tue. Marshall had, moreover, another qual ity without which no man can be a great Judge — courage. Marshall's placid cour age, exhibited on many signal occasions, knew no fear except the fear of God and the fear that through some unconscious lapse he might fall into error. Consequences of his decisions to himself or to parties, if he ever considered, he never heeded. Back of all this was the simplicity, worth and dignity of his lofty character.*
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airing his own learning, but only that he might better elucidate the subject in hand. He never delighted in small shows of author ity over the members of his Bar, and it is certain that when he presided at nisi prius, he did not aim to impress the galleries, or use the occasion of an application for a con tinuance to harangue the rear benches. Nor did he play politics in court, intending that the benefit should return to him in the shape of political advancement or favor. His character was such as to assure us that no matter what judicial position he might oc cupy, he would never curry favor with the people by disloyalty to the Bar. The striking feature of his Court was the absence of hurry. The Court seemed to have plenty of time, and calmly and leisurely took up the cases before it and heard them exhaustively presented before passing on them. The modern practice of writing opin ions while you wait was happily not in vogue then. Marshall was not haunted by the fear of an overclogged calendar, and thought it more important that causes should be prop erly considered and determined than that he should keep his calendar clear.1
Shortly before his death, in reply to a/i address from the Bar of Philadelphia, de claring that he had "illuminated the juris prudence of his country and enforced with equal mildness and firmness its constitu tional authority," the Chief Justice replied, with his unvarying modesty, that "if he might be permitted to claim for himself any part of their approval, it would be that he had never sought to enlarge the judicial power beyond its proper bounds, nor feared Marshall had the first qualification of a to carry it to the fullest extent that duty re good Judge — that of being a good listener. quired"—-thus firmly maintaining to the end He heard the last word of the wordiest bar the two guiding principles with which he rister, knowing that it might contain the began his judicial career. The bar of Richmond has left an enduring whole matter. He interrupted counsel some times with pertinent suggestion and inter record of their appreciation of him, and rogation, but never for the purpose of of their veneration for him, which seems to 1 Honorable I.eBaron B. Colt, United States Circuit me the best portrait of a perfect Judge Judge. "Honorable John F. Dillon, of New York.
1 Honorable Neal Brown, of Wassau, Wisconsin.
