Volume IV Part 53 (2/2)
[1260] Johnson was only thirty-one years old at this time, but already a leader of the Baltimore bar and giving sure promise of the distinguished career he afterward achieved.
[1261] 12 Wheaton, 436.
[1262] 12 Wheaton, 437-39.
[1263] _Ib._ 441.
[1264] _Ib._ 441-42.
[1265] 12 Wheaton, 443-44.
[1266] See _infra_, 536-38.
[1267] 12 Wheaton, 448-49.
[1268] 5 Howard, 575.
CHAPTER IX
THE SUPREME CONSERVATIVE
If a judge becomes odious to the people, let him be removed.
(William Branch Giles.)
Our wisest friends look with gloom to the future. (Joseph Story.)
I have always thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and a sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary. (Marshall.)
”I was in a very great crowd the other evening at M^{rs} Adams' drawing room, but I see very few persons there whom I know & fewer still in whom I take any interest. A person as old as I am feels that his home is his place of most comfort, and his old wife the companion in the world in whose society he is most happy.
”I dined yesterday with Mr. Randolph. He is absorbed in the party politics of the day & seems as much engaged in them as he was twenty five years past. It is very different with me. I long to leave this busy bustling scene & to return to the tranquility of my family & farm.
Farewell my dearest Polly. That Heaven may bless you is the unceasing prayer of your ever affectionate
”J. MARSHALL.”[1269]
This letter to his ageing and afflicted wife, written in his seventy-second year, reveals Marshall's state of mind as he entered the final decade of his life. While the last of his history-making and nation-building opinions had been delivered, the years still before him were to be crowded with labor as arduous and scenes as picturesque as any during his career on the Bench. It was to be a period of disappointment and grief, but also of that supreme reward for sound and enduring work which comes from recognition of the general and lasting benefit of that work and of the greatness of mind and n.o.bility of character of him who performed it.
For twenty years the Chief Justice had not voted. The last ballot he had cast was against the reelection of Jefferson in 1804. From that time forward until 1828, he had kept away from the polls. In the latter year he probably voted for John Quincy Adams, or rather against Andrew Jackson, who, as Marshall thought, typified the recrudescence of that unbridled democratic spirit which he so increasingly feared and distrusted.[1270]
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN MARSHALL]
Yet, even in so grave a crisis as Marshall believed the Presidential election of 1828 to be, he shrank from the appearance of partisans.h.i.+p.
The _Marylander_, a Baltimore Democratic paper, published an item quoting Marshall as having said: ”I have not voted for twenty years; but I shall consider it a solemn duty I owe my country to go to the polls and vote at the next presidential election--for should Jackson be elected, I shall look upon the government as virtually dissolved.”[1271]
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