As to the nature of the instrument he was not misled by false analogies. He knew that the so-called "rules" of construction applica ble to contracts between individuals, to wills, or even to ordinary legislative enactments, were not necessarily and always applicable to a Constitution, an instrument stii generis. "We must never forget," he once said, "that it is a Constitution that we are expounding." (4 Wheaton, 607.) "This provision is made in a Constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." (4 Wheaton, 415.) And on another occasion he said: "A Constitution is framed for ages to come and is designed to approach immor tality as nearly as human institutions can ap proach it." (6 Wheaton, 387.) He i/ealizecl the distinction between a Con stitution and a code of laws. He believed that the Constitution was not intended to contain "an accurate detail of all the sub divisions of which its great powers will ad mit," or of "all the means by which they may be carried into execution.'1 In his view the very nature of the instrument required (and its framers so intended) "that only its great outlines should be marked, its important' ob jects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves." Hence he derived the doctrine that Congress has implied power to enact appropriate legis lation to carry out the objects aimed at by the Constitution. "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional." (4 Wheaton, 421.) Again, unlike some modern Judges, Mar shall did not refuse to declare a statute un constitutional merely because the Constitu tion did not contain, in express words, a spe cific prohibition of the particular legislation in question In the great case of McCulloch v. Maryland, in sustaining the claim of the
United States Bank that it was exempt iroin the power of a State to tax its operations, he said : "There is no express provision for the case; but the claim has been sustained on a principle which so entirely pervades the Con stitution, is so intermixed with the materials which compose it, so interwoven with its web, or blended with its texture, as to be in capable of being separated from it without rending it into shreds." (4 Wheaton, 426.)1 • It is no extravagance, it is but the itera tion of a plain fact to say that of all then liv ing men John Marshall was best fitted to be Chief Justice of the United States. It was not the profound and astute common lawyer that was then needed. Rather it was the combination of jurist and statesman who loved his country, and his whole country, and whose mind was limited by no State lines. Who would love his country more than he who fought for its independence, than he who early declared that America was his country, and who could love the Consti tution more than he who had exerted his every effort to bring it into operation and who had since nursed it as a tender child, and who so well fitted to correctly interpret that Constitution as he who in its defense had been forced to scrutinize the meaning of its every word and line. All these condi tions were happily blended in John Marshall. But Providence had not there stopped his equipment. Its greatest gift to the man was his unanswerable logic and the power that his pure, earnest, candid life gave him over men with whom he was called upon to daily associate. Most fortunate is it for us, most fortunate for this land that John Marshall was thus gifted. Judges are but men. They go upon the Bench carrying with them their existing political principles and political bias. Nearly all great constitutional questions have a direct political bearing. In their solu tion the Judges carry with them their politi cal principles, and are always inclined to that construction that conforms to their po 'Prcfessoi Smitb
