of Minister to France, as Mr. Monroe’s successor, but he declined it for the same reason which had made him refuse the Attorney-Generalship.  In 1797, when the offer was repeated, this time by President Adams, Marshall yielded to the entreaties of Washington, and went to France with Pinckney and Gerry, as Envoy Extraordinary.  The object of the mission was to remove the obstructions placed by France in the way of American commerce.  The Envoys were unsuccessful, but a correspondence took place between Marshall and Talleyrand, which was a source of great satisfaction to American publicists, and raised Marshall still higher in their esteem and confidence.  Upon his return home in 1798, he was given a public reception in New York by the citizens, and a public dinner by the two Houses of Congress, “as an evidence of affection for his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness with which he had sustained the dignity of his country during his important mission.”  He subsequently took a prominent part in support of the measures of retaliation directed against France by the Administration, which were sharply assailed by the opposition.  He resumed his practice in Richmond, but was again drawn from it by a message from Washington, who requested him to visit him at Mt.  Vernon.  He did so, and the result was that he yielded to the solicitations of his old chieftain, and consented to accept a seat in Congress.  He was elected to the Lower House of that body in 1799.  During the canvass, President Adams offered him a seat in the Supreme Court of the United States, but he declined it.

His career in Congress was brief, but brilliant.  The Federalist party was hard pressed by the Republicans, and he promptly arrayed himself on the side of the former, as the champion of the Administration of John Adams.  The excitement over the “Alien and Sedition Laws” was intense, but he boldly and triumphantly defended the course of the Administration.  Mr. Binney says of him that, in the debates on the great constitutional questions, “he was confessedly the first man in the House.  When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained to be said; and the impression of his argument effaced that of every one else.”

His great triumph was his speech in the Jonathan Robbins affair.  Robbins had committed a murder on board an English ship-of-war, and had sought refuge from punishment in the United States.  In accordance with one of the provisions of Jay’s Treaty, his surrender had been demanded by the British Minister, on the ground that he was a British subject, and he had been surrendered by President Adams.  The opposition in Congress made this act a pretext for a famous assault upon the Administration, and a resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr. Livingston, censuring the President for his course in the matter.  This resolution produced an extended debate in the House, in the course of which Marshall defended the President in a speech of great force and eloquence.  Judge Story has said of this speech, that “it was reponse sans replique—­an answer so irresistible that it admitted of no reply.  It silenced opposition, and settled then and forever the points of national law upon which the controversy hinged.”