Albert Beveridge

But the principle announced by Marshall, that enemy bottoms do not make enemy goods and that neutral property is sacred, remained and still remains the American doctrine.

Admirable and formative as were Marshall's opinions of the law of nations, they received no attention from the people, no opposition from the politicians, and were generally approved by the bar.

At the very next term of the Supreme Court, after the decision in the case of the Nereid, an opinion was delivered by Story that aroused more contention and had greater effect on the American Nation than had all the decisions of the…

Hunter's Lessee went further than any previous judicial pronouncement to establish the relation between National courts and State tribunals which now exists and will continue as long as the Republic endures.

This conflict between the Supreme Court of the United States and the Court of Appeals of Virginia opened another phase of that fundamental struggle which war was to decide--a fact without knowledge of which this phase of American…

The only exception to this rule is when the statute of a state is supposed to violate the constitution of the United States, in which case the courts of the Union claim a controuling & supervising power.

At no period and in no land, in so brief a space of time, has any other jurist or statesman ever bestowed upon his country three documents of equal importance.

Like the other fundamental state papers which, in the form of judicial opinions, Marshall gave out from the Supreme Bench, those of 1819 were compelled by grave and dangerous conditions, National in extent.

Not in the narrow technical points involved, some of them diminutive and all uninviting in their formality; not in the dreary records of the law cases decided, is to be found the measure of his monumental service to the Republic or the…

The state of things which imperatively demanded the exercise of his creative genius and the firm pressure of his steadying hand must be understood in order to grasp the significance of his labors.

Seldom has such a financial motley ever covered with variegated rags the backs of a people.

The confusion was incredible; but not for a moment did the millions who suffered, blame themselves for their tragic predicament.

An institution like this, penetrating by it's branches every part of the Union, acting by command & in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government....

Our whole system of Banks is a violation of every honest Principle of Banks....

A Bank that issues Paper at Interest is a Pickpocket or a Robber.

But, when the restraining and regulating influence of that conservative and ably managed institution was removed altogether, local banking began a course that ended in a mad carnival of roguery, to the ruin of legitimate business and the…

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?...

Bank notes fell in value; specie payments were suspended; rates of exchange were in utter confusion and constantly changing.

It could not negotiate its loans; the public dues were collected with difficulty, loss, and delay; the Treasury was well-nigh bankrupt.

The people, believing that devastated Europe would absorb all American products, and beholding a vision of radiant prosperity, were eager to buy.

The multitude of local banks intensified both these manias by every device that guile and avarice could suggest.

Every one wanted to get rich at the expense of some one else by a mysterious process, the nature of which was not generally understood beyond the fact that it involved some sort of trickery.

So terrifying became the evil that the Legislature of New York, although one of the worst offenders in the granting of bank charters, was driven to appoint a committee of investigation.

Thus bank charters were granted by wholesale and they were often little better than permits to plunder the public.

Counterfeiting was widely practiced and, for a time, almost unpunished; a favorite device was the raising of notes, usually from five to fifty dollars.