Times of civil trouble had now come, teeming with dangers hardly less than those which had beset the country ten years before. The Confederation, by which the States were united, was found too feeble a bond of union, and a still feebler means of concurrent action. It could resolve, legislate, and make requisitions upon the States; but had no power to effectuate its resolutions, laws, or requisitions. It could contract debts, but not lay taxes of any kind to pay them. It could declare war, but not raise armies to wage it. It could make treaties, but not so as to regulate commerce—perhaps the most frequent and important aim of treaties. Each State had the determining of its own scale of duties on imports; the power of coining money, and of emitting paper-money at pleasure: conflicting revenue-laws, therefore, and a disordered currency, made "confusion worse confounded." The public debt, incurred by the revolution, was unpaid. More than three hundred millions of continental paper money were unredeemed; and having depreciated to the value of one dollar for every hundred, had ceased to circulate. Public credit was nearly at an end: private credit, by the frequent violation of contracts, was at an equally low ebb: the administration of civil justice was suspended, sometimes by the wilful delinquency of the courts, sometimes by state-laws, restraining their proceedings. Commerce, Agriculture, Manufactures—industry of every kind,—were crippled. "Laws suspending the collection of debts; insolvent laws; instalment laws; tender laws; and other expedients of a like nature, which, every reflecting man knew would only aggravate the evils, were familiarly adopted, or openly and boldly vindicated. Popular leaders, as well as men of desperate fortunes, availed themselves (as is usual on such occasions) of this agitating state of things to inflame the public mind, and to bring into public odium those wiser statesmen, who labored to support the public faith, and to preserve the inviolability of private contracts." To strengthen the arm of the general government, and invest it with larger powers over the commerce, the money, and the foreign and mutual relations of the States—was believed by most people to be the only remedy for these intolerable evils. Mr. Marshall concurred with Gen. Washington, Mr. Madison, and the majority of their countrymen, in approving of this remedy; and as a member of the State Legislature, advocated the call of a Convention, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Whether they should be so altered, as to increase materially the powers of the Federal Government—was a question which in most of the State Legislatures elicited strenuous debates; and no where more, than in the Legislature of Virginia. The men of this day have little idea, how strong were the gusts of discussion at that momentous period. "It is scarcely possible," says Judge Story, "to conceive the zeal, and even animosity, with which the opposing opinions were maintained." The dissolution or continuance of the Union, was freely discussed: one party boldly advocating the former, as necessary to prevent the destruction of State-sovereignty; the other party pleading for UNION, as not only the sole cure for the immeasurable ills which were then afflicting the land, but as indispensable to the preservation of Liberty itself, in the several States. And Union, it was alleged, could not be preserved but by a more vigorous central government.
Mr. Marshall, not then thirty years old, shared largely in the discussions which shook both the Legislative hall, and the popular assemblies, of Virginia, on this great question. Mr. Madison, with whom he served several years in the House of Delegates, fought "side by side, and shoulder to shoulder" with him, through the contest: and "the friendship, thus formed between them, was never extinguished. The recollection of their co-operation at that period served, when other measures had widely separated them from each other, still to keep up a lively sense of each other's merits. Nothing, indeed, could be more touching to an ingenuous mind, than to hear from their lips, in their latter years, expressions of mutual respect and confidence; or to witness their earnest testimony to the talents, the virtues, and the services of each other."7
7 Judge Story.
It was in these debates, that Mr. Marshall's mind acquired the skill in political discussion, which afterwards distinguished him, and which would of itself have made him conspicuous as a parliamentarian, had not that talent been overshadowed by his renown in a more soberly illustrious, though less dazzling career. Here, too, it was, that he conceived that deep dread of disunion, and that profound conviction of the necessity for closer bonds between the States, which gave the coloring to the whole texture of his opinions, upon federal politics in after life.
The Convention was at length called; and its product, the present Federal Constitution, was submitted for ratification to the States. In most of them, Conventions were likewise called, to adopt or reject it. Mr. Marshall, though the people of his county were decidedly opposed to the new Constitution, and though he avowed on the hustings his determination to support it, was elected to the Virginia Convention by a considerable majority. In that body, he took an effective, if not a leading part. Three able speeches of his, in behalf of the Constitution, appear in Mr. Robertson's report of the Debates: Speeches, seconding with "masculine logic, the persuasive talents of George Nicholas, the animated flow of Governor Randolph, the grave and sententious sagacity of Pendleton, the consummate skill and various knowledge of Madison."8 After an earnest and powerful struggle of 25 days, the Constitution was agreed to, by a majority of but ten votes—89 to 79. This result is supposed to have been promoted, by the news, received while the Convention sat, that nine states had come to a similar decision. The accession of Virginia to that number, already large enough to give the instrument validity among the adopting states, ensured its complete success; and was hailed by its friends with the liveliest joy.
8 Judge Story.
Judge Story depicts in vivid colors, the happy effects of the Government thus established, upon our prosperity: and exults over the falsified apprehensions of those who, clinging "with an insane attachment" to the former confederation, and "accustomed to have all their affections concentrated upon the State governments," saw in the new system "but another name for an overwhelming despotism." Undoubtedly, the state of things which preceded the change, was as bad as, with such a people, it could well be. Undoubtedly, the new government did very much, to retrieve our national credit and honor; to make us respected abroad, tranquil and prosperous at home. But still, not all is due to the Government. A people, animated with the spirit of freedom, enlightened enough to see their interests, and enterprising enough to pursue them strenuously,—inhabiting, too, a country not peopled to the extent of a thousandth part of its immense capabilities—would thrive and grow powerful in spite of what almost any government could do to impede their onward march. In the body politic there is, what physicians ascribe to the body natural, a vis medicatrix Naturæ, by which the wounds of War, the desolations of Pestilence, and all the ills flowing from the blunders of charlatan statesmen, are healed and made amends for. Few are so bigoted as not to admit, that the self-healing energies of our country have thus at some times prevailed over the hurtful tendencies of the measures adopted by her rulers. There is nevertheless a force and beauty in Judge Story's picture of her happiness, that make it worthy of insertion:
"We have lived," says he, "to see all their fears and prophecies of evil scattered to the winds. We have witnessed the solid growth and prosperity of the whole country, under the auspices of the National Government, to an extent never even imagined by its warmest friends. We have seen our agriculture pour forth its various products, created by a generous, I had almost said, a profuse industry. The miserable exports, scarcely amounting in the times, of which I have been speaking, in the aggregate, to the sum of one or two hundred thousand dollars, now almost reach to forty9 millions a year in a single staple. We have seen our commerce, which scarcely crept along our noiseless docks, and stood motionless and withering, while the breezes of the ocean moaned through the crevices of our ruined wharves and deserted warehouses, spread its white canvass in every clime; and, laden with its rich returns, spring buoyant on the waves of the home ports; and cloud the very shores with forests of masts, over which the stars and stripes are gallantly streaming. We have seen our manufactures, awakening from a deathlike lethargy, crowd every street of our towns and cities with their busy workmen, and their busier machinery; and startling the silence of our wide streams, and deep dells, and sequestered valleys. We have seen our wild waterfalls, subdued by the power of man, become the mere instruments of his will, and, under the guidance of mechanical genius, now driving with unerring certainty the flying shuttle, now weaving the mysterious threads of the most delicate fabrics, and now pressing the reluctant metals into form, as if they were but playthings in the hands of giants. We have seen our rivers bear upon their bright waters the swelling sails of our coasters, and the sleepless wheels of our steamboats in endless progress. Nay, the very tides of the ocean, in their regular ebb and flow in our ports, seem now but heralds to announce the arrival and departure of our uncounted navigation. We have seen all these things; and we can scarcely believe, that there were days and nights, nay, months and years, in which our wisest patriots and statesmen sat down, in anxious meditation to devise the measures which should save the country from impending ruin."
9 The exports of cotton alone, in the year ending Sept. 30th, 1834, were $49,448,000—Reviewer.
9 The exports of cotton alone, in the year ending Sept. 30th, 1834, were $49,448,000—Reviewer.