The Life of John Marshall: The building of the nation, 1815-1835

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Houghton Mifflin, 1919
 

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Page 554 - It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government; made for the people; made by the people: and answerable to the people.
Page 301 - But where the law is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of the objects entrusted to the government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity, would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department, and to tread on legislative ground.
Page 532 - But when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages, artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer, and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society, the farmers, mechanics, and laborers, who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.
Page 293 - The government of the Union, then (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case), is emphatically and truly a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.
Page 27 - I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are, virtually, dissolved; that the states which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that as it .will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare, definitely, for a separation; amicably, if they can; violently if they must.
Page 292 - No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the states, and of compounding the American people into one common mass.
Page 307 - If the States may tax one instrument employed by the government in the execution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instrument. They may tax the mail ; they may tax the mint; they may tax patent rights; they may tax the papers of the custom-house...
Page 295 - 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.
Page 473 - I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the National authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same...
Page 308 - The difference is that which always exists, and always must exist, between the action of the whole on a part, and the action of a part on the whole — between the laws of a government declared to be supreme, and those of a government which, when in opposition to those laws, is not supreme.

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