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partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It could probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language." He perfectly understood that the fathers, in their wisdom, had undertaken to do no more than construct a framework of governmental timbers, leaving the filling out of the interior details to legislation and to the defining and expanding hand of judicial interpretation. While no one was more content to dwell within the sacred circle marked by the outer walls of the temple, no one was more resolute than Marshall in harmonizing and adorning its interior through the application of the resources of judge-made law. Such an application was never more necessary than when the Supreme Court was called upon to create a body of rules sufficiently comprehensive to give effect to that brief and vague constitutional provision, providing that "The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." Vast areas of territory were to be acquired and governed, without any definite grant of power to do either. Fortunately, Marshall and his associates clearly understood that the history of colonization from the Greek days down put beyond question the fact that inhabitants of undeveloped states, while in a colonial condition, have no right, natural or historical, to be admitted at once to the full citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution of the parent state. Jefferson, the real founder of our territorial system, perfectly understood that truth, and Gouverneur Morris, the draftsman of the provision in question, wrote at a later day that, "I always thought that when we would acquire Canada and Louisiana it would be proper to govern them as provinces and allow them no voice in our councils." Fortunately for this country that conservative view entertained by the makers of the Constitution, and coined into judge-made

law by Marshall and his associates, has not been supplanted by the romantic yet dangerous after-thought of a later time.

Nothing has been more remarkable in the history of our federal constitution than the ease with which it has adapted itself to the ever increasing wants of a rapidly swelling population, continually organizing new systems of local government beyond our original limits. When, during Jefferson's second term, the application of steam to navigation was made by Robert Fulton a revolution was wrought in the commerce of the country through a transition from the primitive and ineffectual means of transportation by pack horse and wagon to the methods in use today. A notable legal result of the change was a substitution for the ancient English rule of admiralty jurisdiction, resting on the ebb and flow of the tide, of a new one better adapted to totally different physical conditions. As you all know, in Taney's time the navigable character of the water was made the test; and thus, by the silent stroke of the judicial pen the admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts was extended not only beyond the flow of the tide in all public navigable waters, but even over the great fresh-water lakes as well, inland seas upon which fleets have encountered. No one will deny that the unparalleled material development of this country has been largely worked out through the agency of corporations, the public confidence in whose stability has rested largely upon the famous decision rendered in 1819 in the Dartmouth College Case, wherein it was held that the charter of a corporation is a contract, and as such protected from violation by Article 1, Section 10 of the Federal Constitution. Thus by a momentous stroke of the judicial pen American corporations were placed in a condition of security as to the legislative power never before occupied by such bodies in any other country in the world. If in the great case in question, Marshall, with the concurrence of his associates, had written but a word declaring that such charters are not contracts within the meaning of the clause in question, the economic conditions of this country, so far as trusts and monopolies are concerned, would stand in an entirely different situation. Now that an appeal is being made for relief from such conditions to the judicial tribunals, the

fact can not be ignored that the power that made can unmake, that the power that built up can destroy. In this grave matter, a silent stroke of the judicial pen could work a revolution. No other department of government is so capable as the judicial to deal with a problem whose complexity is as great as its influence is far-reaching. Our experience has demonstrated the fact that nothing so rapidly advances commercial and industrial interests as legitimate corporations, exercising normal powers according to law. The problem is how to protect such in their legal rights, and at the same time crush out the illegitimate and abnormal. After formal legislation has exhausted its resources the ultimate solution of the problem will still remain for the judicial power, the last and decisive word must be spoken by the Supreme Court of the United States.

When, in the light of what has now been said, the growth of the jurisdiction of that tribunal is viewed as one unbroken development, is there anything in its history, taken as a whole, to disquiet us? When the intricacy and delicacy of the mighty task which it has been executing for more than a century is calmly considered, must not the scientific jurist frankly admit that it could only have been performed through the agency of judgemade law,—that agency which silently expanded and adapted the primitive and unelastic codes of Rome and England to the ever increasing wants of progressive societies? When viewed in the light of its beneficent history, as illustrated by those codes, there is no reason to apprehend that that kind of law may eventually undermine our Federal Constitution. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that without the adjusting, defining and expanding power of judge-made law it would have been impossible to adapt our complicated and rigid system of written constitutions to the new and varied conditions which have so rapidly arisen out of an unparalleled natural development.

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