[714] Webster to Mason, April 28, 1818, Priv. Corres.: Webster, I, 282-83. (Italics the author's.) In fact three such suits were brought early in 1818 on the ground of diverse citizenship. (Shirley, 2-3.) Any one of them would have enabled the Supreme Court to have passed on the "general principles" of contract and government. These cases, had they arrived on time, would have afforded Story his almost frantically desired opportunity to declare that legislation violative of contracts was against "natural right"—an opinion he fervently desired to give. But the wiser Marshall saw in the case, as presented to the Supreme Court on the contract guarantee of the Constitution, the occasion to declare, in effect, that these same fundamental principles are embraced in the contract clause of the written Constitution of the American Nation.
[715] Webster to Mason, March 13, 1818, Priv. Corres.: Webster, i, 275.
"Every body was grinning at the folly he uttered. Bell could not stand it. He seized his hat and went off." (Webster to Smith, March 14, 1818, ib. 277; and see Webster to Brown, March 11, 1818, Van Tyne, 75-76.)
Holmes "has attempted as a politician ... such a desire to be admired by everybody, that he has ceased for weeks to be regarded by anybody.... In the Dartmouth College Cause, he sunk lower at the bar than he had in the Hall of Legislature." (Daggett to Mason, March 18, 1818, Hillard: Memoir and Correspondence of Jeremiah Mason, 199.)
The contempt of the legal profession for Holmes is shown by the fact that in Farrar's Report but four and one half pages are given to his argument, while those of all other counsel for Woodward (Sullivan and Bartlett in the State court and Wirt in the Supreme Court) are published in full.
[716] "He made an apology for himself, that he had not had time to study the case, and had hardly thought of it, till it was called on." (Webster to Mason, March 13, 1818, Priv. Corres.: Webster, i, 275-76.)
[717] "Before he concluded he became so exhausted ... that he was obliged to request the Court to indulge him until the next day." (Boston Daily Advertiser, March 23, 1818.)
"Wirt ... argues a good cause well. In this case he said more nonsensical things than became him." (Webster to Smith, March 14, 1818, Priv. Corres.: Webster, i, 277.)
[718] Hopkinson wrote this anthem when Marshall returned from France. (See vol. ii, 343, of this work.)
[719] This description of Hopkinson is from Philadelphia according to traditions gathered by the author.