Albert J. Beveridge

“ Indeed, the power of the Bank to engage in general banking is "the vital part of the corporation; it is its soul." As well say that, while the human body must not be touched, the "vivifying principle" which "animates" it may be destroyed, as to say that the Bank shall not be annihilated, but that the faculty by which it exists may be extinguished.
For a State, then, to tax the Bank's "faculties, its trade and occupation, is to tax the Bank itself. To destroy or preserve the one, is to destroy or preserve the other." ”

“ Mingled with much pungent raillery is a solidity of argument and an array of authority which in my judgement is entirely conclusive. But in truth it is a question upon which I never entertained a scintilla of doubt; and have never yet heard an argument which ought to excite a doubt in any sound and reflecting mind. It will be to every thinking American a most afflicting circumstance, should our government on a principle so completely rejected by the world proceed to the execution of unfortunate, of honorable, and of innocent men. ”

“ Such decision was the province of the National Judiciary. While the Supreme Court had been criticized, perhaps justly in some cases, "still it would seem that, with but few exceptions, the course of the judiciary has been hitherto sustained by the predominant sense of the nation." It was absurd to deny the "supremacy of the judicial power of the U. S. & denounce at the same time nullifying power in a State.... A law of the land" cannot be supreme "without a supremacy in the exposition & execution of the law." Nullification was utterly destructive of the Constitution and the Union. ”

“ We must picture this distinctive American character among his associates of the bench in the Washington boarding-house no less than in court, his luminous mind guiding them, his irresistible personality drawing from them a real and lasting affection. We must bear in mind the trust and confidence which so powerfully impressed those who knew the man. We must imagine a person very much like Abraham Lincoln.
[Pg 92]
Indeed, the resemblance of Marshall to Lincoln is striking. Between no two men in American history is there such a likeness. ”

“ Here Marshall permits himself the use of sarcasm, which he dearly loved but seldom employed. The State Rights advocates insisted that the States can be trusted not to abuse their powers—confidence must be reposed in State Legislatures and officials; they would not destroy needlessly, recklessly. "All inconsistencies are to be reconciled by the magic of the word confidence," says Marshall. "But," he continues, "is this a case of 'confidence'? Would the people of any one state trust those of another with a power to control the most insignificant operations of their state government? ”

“ So rapidly did they increase and so great were their gains that, within little more than a year from the demise of the first Bank of the United States, John Adams records: "The Profits of our Banks to the advantage of the few, at the loss of the many, are such an enormous fraud and oppression as no other Nation ever invented or endured. Who can compute the amount of the sums taken out of the Pocketts of the Simple and hoarded in the Purses of the cunning in the course of every year?... If Rumour speaks the Truth Boston has and will emulate Philadelphia in her Proportion of Bankruptcies." ”

“ Marshall's opinion, delivered March 3, 1832, is one of the noblest he ever wrote. "The legislative power of a State, the controlling power of the Constitution and laws of the United States, the rights, if they have any, the political existence of a once numerous and powerful people, the personal liberty of a citizen, are all involved," begins the aged Chief Justice. ”

“ Suppose that, regardless of "our treaty with Spain, considered as an independent measure, the ordinances of that government would subject American property, under similar circumstances, to confiscation." Ought Spanish property, for that reason, to be "condemned as prize of war"? That was not a question for courts to decide: "Reciprocating to the subjects of a nation, or retaliating on them its unjust proceedings towards our citizens, is a political, not a legal measure. It is for the consideration of the government, not of its courts. ”

“ The Chief Justice is exerting to the utmost his tremendous powers, not to protect two furtive peddlers of lottery tickets, but to check a powerful movement that, if not arrested, must destroy the Republic. Should that movement go forward thereafter, it must do so over every Constitutional obstacle which the Supreme Court of the Nation could throw in its way. In Cohens vs. Virginia, John Marshall stamped upon the brow of Localism the brand of illegality. If this is not the true interpretation of his opinion in that case, all of the exalted language he used is mere verbiage. ”

“ It is not immoderate to say that no other judicial pronouncement in history was so wedded to the inventive genius of man and so interwoven with the economic and social evolution of a nation and a people. After almost a century, Marshall's Nationalist theory of commerce is more potent than ever; and nothing human is more certain than that it will gather new strength as far into the future as forecast can penetrate.
At the time of its delivery, nobody complained of Marshall's opinion except the agents of the steamboat monopoly, the theorists of Localism, and the slave autocracy. ”

“ On Thursday these resolutions are to be taken up, and the debate will, I doubt not, be ardent and tempestuous enough. I pretend not to anticipate the result. Should it countenance the obvious design of South Carolina to form a southern confederacy, it may conduce to a southern league—never to a southern government. Our theories are incompatible with a government for more than a single State. We can form no union which shall be closer than an alliance between sovereigns. ”

“ For whose benefit was the property of Dartmouth College given to that institution? For the people at large, as counsel insist? Read the charter. Does it give the State "any exclusive right to the property of the college, any exclusive interest in the labors of the professors?" Does it not rather "merely indicate a willingness that New Hampshire should enjoy those advantages which result to all from the establishment of a seminary of learning in the neighborhood? On this point we think it impossible to entertain a serious doubt." ”

“ Our young men, generally speaking, grow up in the firm belief that liberty depends on construing our Constitution into a league instead of a government; that it has nothing to fear from breaking these United States into numerous petty republics. Nothing in their view is to be feared but that bugbear, consolidation; and every exercise of legitimate power is construed into a breach of the Constitution. ”

“ With savage relish the Chief Justice attacks and demolishes the State Rights theory that the Supreme Court cannot review the judgment of a State court "in any case." That theory, he says, "considers the federal judiciary as completely foreign to that of a state; and as being no more connected with it, in any respect whatever, than the court of a foreign state." [989] But "the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation.... In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. ”

“ Assuming the law which established the Bank to be Constitutional, could Maryland tax a branch of that Bank? If the State could tax the Bank at all, she could put it out of existence, since a "power to tax involves ... a power to destroy" [789] —words that Marshall, in delivering his opinion, repeated as his own. The truth was, said Webster, that, in taxing the Baltimore branch of the National Bank, Maryland taxed the National Government itself. ”