sense, he found the constitutional provision that Congress may make all laws which shall be necessary or proper for carrying into ex ecution the powers vested in the government of the United States, a cornucopia from which could be poured whatever was needed to effectuate a constitutional power. "Let the end be legitimate," said he; "let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional." Thereby he made the Constitution an instru ment that did not, like a strait-jacket, dwarf a growing, enterprising, expanding people, but that has grown with th^e people, and al ways along the lines of its original design.1 In the years of his Judgeship most vital questions of the Constitution came before the high court wherein he presided. Then it was that the spirit, the true meaning, the purpose, the significance of the Constitution demanded exposition, interpretation, deter mination. And the call of the country for judicial decision as to the legal character of their political system was answered by the irresistible logic, the unequaled mental an alysis and the clear expressions of John Mar shall — always the man of self-poise, whom the noises of popular controversy could not disturb nor the conflicts of political parties affect. Thus he earned the title of "expounder of the Constitution," and as such, in a critical time of the Republic, he helped to establish on the foundations of law the mighty fact of American nationality. His decisions in matters involving the integrity and the su premacy of the nation became and have remained and will continue the final adjudi cation as to the relative rights of the Fed eral government and those of the States existing under it* That this country has been blessed with 1 Honorable Horace G. Platt, of San Francisco. ! Honorable Luther Lafflin Mills, of Chicago.
the most perfect written instrument of gov ernment the mind of man has ever devised is due not solely to the members of the con vention which framed it, but in a great meas ure to Marshall. As expounded and inter preted by him, it became a grander and more perfect instrument than it was even in the conception of its framers. "He found the Constitution paper, and he made it power; he found it a skeleton, and clothed it with flesh and blood." That the United States have become a great nation, foremost among the world powers of to-day, capable of arousing and worthy to be the object of those feelings of loyalty and patriotism without which a nation cannot endure and which frequent change of residence prevents the majority of the peo ple of this country from feeling for any of the States, is due to the possession by the United States of the powers which Marshall expounded, defended and justified when the national government was struggling for ex istence. Among the great nation-makers who were his contemporaries, in the long line of illus trious men who have since left their mark upon the history of this country, we shall search in vain for any, save Washington, whose public services were greater or more enduring than those of the man in whose honor we have assembled to-day.1 The value of [John Marshall's] public services cannot now be estimated, for the course of the Constitution is not yet finished. In thirty-six opinions in cases requiring in terpretation of its provisions scarcely one of them escaped his analysis. So convincingly was their meaning unfolded, and with such felicity were the principles of interpretation defined, that it is to be doubted whether in sixty-five years a question of that character has arisen in Federal or State court to whose proper solution his learning has not con tributed. Among our nation builders, he was the finisher. To those who had wrought 1 Honorable Joseph P. Blair.
