Albert Beveridge

It is of the very essence of supremacy to remove all obstacles to its action within its own sphere, and so to modify every power vested in subordinate governments as to exempt its own operations from their own influence.

The legislature of the Union alone, therefore, can be trusted by the people with the power of controlling measures which concern all, in the confidence that it will not be abused.

They may tax the mail; they may tax the mint; they may tax patent-rights; they may tax the papers of the custom-house; they may tax judicial process; they may tax all the means employed by the government, to an excess which would defeat…

This was not intended by the American people.

They did not design to make their government dependent on the states.

But, when a state taxes the operations of the government of the United States, it acts upon institutions created, not by their own constituents, but by people over whom they claim no control.

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…

In effect John Marshall thus rewrote the fundamental law of the Nation; or, perhaps it may be more accurate to say that he made a written instrument a living thing, capable of growth, capable of keeping pace with the advancement of the…

A deadly blow has been struck at the sovereignty of the states, and from a quarter so far removed from the people as to be hardly accessible to public opinion," he wrote.

The people must rouse from the lap of Delilah and prepare to meet the Philistines....

Amendment of the Constitution by judicial interpretation is taking the place of amendment by the people.

He is sensitive over the charge, by now popularly made, that he controls the Supreme Court, and cites the case of the Nereid to prove that the Justices give dissenting opinions whenever they choose.

The leading men of American history have been ill-treated in this respect--for a century they have been held up to our vision as superhuman creatures to admire whom was a duty, to criticize whom was a blasphemy, and to love or understand…

In this wise did the Legislature of his own State repudiate and defy that opinion of John Marshall which has done more for the American Nation than any single utterance of any other one man, excepting only the Farewell Address of…

In such manner, too, was the slavery question brought face to face with Marshall's lasting exposition of the National Constitution.

This law is almost without parallel in severity, peremptoriness, and defiant contempt for National authority.

It is truly an alarming circumstance if it be in the power of an aspiring corporation and an unknown and obscure individual thus to elicit opinions compromitting the vital interests of the States that compose the American Union.

Whence this effort to endow the National Government with powers comparable to those of a monarchy?

For what are the states talking about disunion, and for what are they going to war among themselves?

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.

If a judge can repeal a law of Congress, by declaring it unconstitutional, is not this the exercise of political power? (Senator Richard M.

I fear this subject will be an ignited spark, which, communicated to an immense mass of combustion, will produce an explosion that will shake this Union to its centre....

The noble passages of that remarkable state paper were inspired by, and can be understood only in the light of, the crisis that produced them.

Not in the mere facts of that insignificant case, not in the precise legal points involved, is to be found the inspiration of Marshall's transcendent effort on this occasion.

The opinion of John Marshall in the Cohens case is one of the strongest and most enduring strands of that mighty cable woven by him to hold the American people together as a united and imperishable nation.