The Life of John Marshall

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H A VIRGINIA NATIONALIST Lace Congress up straitly within the enumerated powers. (Jefferson.) Construe the constitution liberally in advancement of the common good. (Hamilton.) To organize government, to retrieve the national character, to establish a system of revenue, to create public credit,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H A VIRGINIA NATIONALIST Lace Congress up straitly within the enumerated powers. (Jefferson.) Construe the constitution liberally in advancement of the common good. (Hamilton.) To organize government, to retrieve the national character, to establish a system of revenue, to create public credit, were among the duties imposed upon them. (Marshall.) I trust in that Providence which has saved us in six troubles, yea, in seven, to rescue us again. (Washington.) The Constitution's narrow escape from defeat in the State Conventions did not end the struggle against the National principle that pervaded it.1 The Anti-Nationalists put forth all their strength to send to the State Legislatures and to the National House and Senate as many antagonists of the National idea as possible.2 Exertions will be made to engage two thirds of the legislatures in the task of regularly undermining the government was Madison's hint to Hamilton.3 Madison cautioned Washington to the same effect, suggesting that a still more ominous part of the plan was to get a Congress appointed in thefirst instance that will commit suicide on their own Authority. 1 Not yet had the timorous Madison personally felt the burly hand of the sovereign people so soon to fall upon him. Not yet had he undergone that familiar reversal of principles wrought in those politicians who keep an ear to the ground. But that change was swiftly approaching. Even then the vox populi was filling the political heavens with a clamor not to be denied by the ambitious. The sentiment of the people required only an organizer to become formidable and finally omnipotent. Such an artisan of public opinion was soon to appear. Indeed, the master political potter was even then about to start for America where the clay for an...