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ment of allegiance to the Constitution, as loyal and devoted as ever was given to any sovereign. You will, I hope, forgive me one personal anecdote. While I had the honor to be Chief Justice of Massachusetts I was a guest of a Boston merchant at a dinner party of gen tlemen, which included Mr. Bartlett, then the foremost lawyer of Massachusetts, and one of the leaders at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the course of the dinner, the host, turning to me, asked, "How great a Judge was this Judge Mar shall, of whom you lawyers are always talk ing? I answered, "The greatest Judge in the language." Mr. Bartlett spoke up, "Is not that rather strong, Chief Justice? I re joined, "Mr. Bartlett, what do you say?" After a moment's pause, and speaking with characteristic deliberation and emphasis, he replied: "I do not know but you are right." A service of nearly twenty years on the bench of the Supreme Court has confirmed me in this estimate. We must remember that, as has been well said by an eminent advocate of our own time, Mr. Edward J. Phelps, in speaking of Chief Justice Mar shall: "The test of historical greatness — the sort of greatness that becomes important in future history — is not great ability mere ly. It is great ability, combined with great opportunity, greatly employed." None other of the great judges of England or of America ever had the great opportunity that fell to the lot of Marshall.1
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I wish to remark upon but three things l connected with the career of John Marshall. It is not obvious what most of us are born for, nor why almost any one might as well not have been born at all. Occasionally, however, it is plain that a man is sent into the world with a particular work to perform. If the man is commonly, though not always, unconscious of his mission, his contempo raries are, as a rule, equally blind, and it remains for after generations to discover 1 Mr. Justice Gray.
that a man has lived and died for whom was set an appointed task, who has attempted and achieved it, and who has made the whole course of history different from what it would have been without him. John Mar shall had a mission of that sort, to the suc cess of which intellect and learning of the highest order, as well as special legal ability and training might well have proved inadequate. But the wonderful thing is that, to all human appearances, Marshall was des tined to be denied anything like a reasona ble opportunity to prepare for this mission. Contrast the poverty of his preparation with the greatness of the work before him. He probably did not appreciate it himself — it is certain, I think, that his fellow-citi zens and contemporaries were far from ap preciating it. To most of them the State was closer, dearer, and vastly more important than the nation; by all of them the significanee of the place of the judiciary in the new government was but dimly, if at all, perceived; while to the world at large the judiciary of a new nation of thir teen small States strung along the North Atlantic seaboard, comprising a popu lation of some four million souls, neces sarily seemed a tribunal of the smallest pos sible account. To-day the "American Em pire," as Marshall himself was the first to call it, with its immense territory and its seventy-five millions of people, is a negligi ble factor nowhere on earth, and its Na tional Supreme Court ranks as the most exalted and potent judicial tribunal that human skill has yet organized. But the work Marshall was destined to undertake can be estimated only by considering its inherent character. All minor features being disre garded, there are two of capital importance. In the first place, here was a ship of state just launched which was to be run rigidly by chart — by sailing directions laid down in advance and not to be departed from whatever the winds or the waves or the sur prises or perils of the voyage — in accord ance with grants and limitations of power
