Marshall was becoming a prosperous lawyer and his best clients were from the mercantile interests. His family relationships were coming to be more and more with the property classes. He had no ambition for a political career, which might have given to his thinking and conclusions a "more popular cast," to use Madison's contemptuous phrase. Thus Marshall's economic and political convictions resulting from experience and reasoning were in harmony with his business connections and social environment.
Undoubtedly he would have taken the same stand had none of these circumstances developed; his constructive mind, his conservative temperament, his stern sense of honor, his abhorrence of disorder and loose government, his army experience, his legislative schooling, his fidelity to and indeed adoration of Washington, would have surely placed him on the side of the Constitution. Still, the professional and social side of his life should not be ignored, if we are to consider fully all the forces which then surrounded him, and which, with ever-growing strength, worked out the ultimate Marshall.
Jefferson, in France, experienced only the foreign results of the sharp and painful predicament which John Marshall was sadly witnessing in America. While not busy with the scholars and society of the French Capital, Jefferson had been engaged in the unhappy official task of staving off our French creditors and quieting, as well as he could, complaints of our trade regulations and other practices which made it hard and hazardous for the French to do business with us.[970] He found that "the nonpaiment of our debts and the want of energy in our government ... discourage a connection with us";[971] and "want of punctuality & a habitual protection of the debtor" prevented him from getting a loan in France to aid the opening of the Potomac.[972] All this caused even Jefferson to respond to the demand for unifying the American Government as to foreign nations; but he would not go further. "Make the States one as to every thing connected with foreign nations, & several as to everything purely domestic," counseled Jefferson while the Constitutional Convention was quarreling at Philadelphia.[973]
But he did not think badly of the weakness of the Articles of Confederation which so aroused the disgust, anger, and despair of Washington, Madison, Jay, and other men of their way of thinking, who were on the ground. "With all the imperfections of our present government [Articles of Confederation]," wrote Jefferson in Paris, in 1787, "it is without comparison the best existing or that ever did exist";[974] and he declared to one of his French friends that "the confederation is a wonderfully perfect instrument."[975] Jefferson found but three serious defects in the Articles of Confederation: no general rule for admitting States; the apportionment of the State's quota of money upon a land instead of a population basis; and the imperfect power over treaties, import duties, and commerce.[976]
He frankly said: "I am not a friend to a very energetic government"; and he thought that "our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries"—but added with seer-like vision: "as long as ... there shall be vacant lands in America."[977] Jefferson wished the United States "to practice neither commerce nor navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China."[978] Far from thinking that the low state of our credit was a bad thing for us, he believed that its destruction would work an actual benefit to America. "Good will arise from the destruction of our credit," he asserted in a letter to Stuart written from Paris in 1786. "I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and the loss of those manners which alone can preserve republican government."[979]
We have now seen the state of the country and the condition of the people, their situation and habits, their manner of life and trend of feeling. We have witnessed the change thus wrought in the leading men during this period, so destructive of confidence in the wisdom or virtue of majorities, at least on first impulse and without abundant time for reflection and second thought. Thus we have measured, with some degree of accuracy, the broad and well-marked space that separated the hostile forces which were to meet in what was for the moment a decisive conflict when Virginia's Constitutional Convention should assemble at Richmond.
In one camp the uninformed and credulous, those who owed debts and abhorred government, with a sprinkling among them of eminent, educated, and well-meaning men who were philosophic apostles of theoretical liberty; and in the other camp men of property and lovers of order, the trading and moneyed interests whose first thought was business; the veterans of the Revolution who had learned on the battlefield the need of a strong central Government; and, here and there, a prophetic and constructive mind who sought to build a Nation. John Marshall was one of the latter; and so he promptly took his place by the side of his old general and leader in the camp of the builders.
At last the supreme hour is striking. The Virginians, about to assemble in State Convention, will determine the fate of that unauthorized and revolutionary plan for a National Government,[980] the National Constitution. The movement for a second general Convention to have another try at framing a Constitution has made distinct progress by the time the Virginia representatives gather at the State Capital.[981] There is widespread, positive, and growing resentment at the proposed new form of government; and if Virginia, the largest and most populous of the States, rejects it, the flames of opposition are certain to break out in every part of the country. As Washington asserts, there is, indeed, "combustible material" everywhere.
Thus it is that the room where Virginia's Convention is about to meet in June, 1788, will become the "bloody angle" in the first great battle for Nationalism. And Marshall will be there, a combatant as he had been at Great Bridge and Brandywine. Not for John Marshall the pallid rôle of the trimmer, but the red-blooded part of the man of conviction.