Mr. Marshall, in 1788, assisted to make the new constitution of Virginia.  By the desire of Washington he ran for Congress as a Federalist.  President Washington offered him the place of attorney-general, which he declined.  He also declined the minister to France, but subsequently accepted the position from President Adams, and in France was insulted with his fellow-members by Talleyrand.  John Adams, on his return, wished to make him a member of the Supreme Court, but this he declined, preferring the practice of the law.

It was at Mount Vernon that Washington prevailed upon him to run for Congress.  The story being raised that Patrick Henry was opposed to him, old Henry came forward and said:  “I should rather give my vote to John Marshall than to any citizen of this State at this juncture, one only excepted,” meaning Washington.

The father of Robert E. Lee was one of the old Federal minority rallying under Marshall.  Marshall had scarcely taken his seat in Congress, in 1799, when Washington died, and he officially announced the death at Philadelphia, and followed his remarks by introducing the resolutions drafted by General Lee, which contained the words, “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

ON THE BENCH.

John Marshall was next Secretary of State of John Adams, succeeding Timothy Pickering.  Adams was defeated for re-election, but before he went out of office he appointed Marshall chief-justice, at the age of forty-five.

At the head of that great bench sat Marshall more than one-third of a century.  Before him pleaded all the great lawyers of the country, like William Pinckney, Hugh Legare, Daniel Webster, Horace Binney, Luther Martin, and Walter Jones.

John Marshall left as his great legacy to the United States his interpretation of the Constitution.  While chief-justice he became a member of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia in company with Madison and Monroe, both of whom had been President.  He gave the Federal Constitution its liberal interpretation, that it was not merely a bone thrown to the general government, which must be watched with suspicion while it ate, but that it was a document with something of the elasticity of our population and climate, and that it was designed to convey to the general state powers noble enough to give us respect.

Without a spot on his reputation, without an upright enemy, the old man attended to his duty absolutely, loved argument, encouraged all young lawyers at the bar, and he lived down to the time of nullification, and when General Jackson issued his proclamation against the nullifiers John Marshall and Judge Story went up to the White House and took a glass of wine with him.

And thus those two old men silently appreciated each other near the end of their days when the suspicions of Jefferson had resulted in incipient rebellion that was to break out in less than thirty years, and which Marshall predicted unless there was a more general assent to the fact that we were one country, and not a parcel of political chicken-coops.—­GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.