udgment so sure, as to inspire universal confidence, so that
few appeals were ever taken from his decisions, during his long
administration of justice in the Court, and those only in cases where
he himself expressed doubt,--with such modesty, that he seemed wholly
unconscious of his own gigantic powers,--with such equanimity, such
benignity of temper, such amenity of manners, that not only none of
the judges, who sat with him on the bench, but no member of the bar,
no officer of the court, no juror, no witness, no suitor, in a single
instance, ever found or imagined, in any thing said or done, or omitted
by him, the slightest cause of offence.

"His private life was worthy of the exalted character he sustained in
public station. The unaffected simplicity of his manners; the spotless
purity of his morals; his social, gentle, cheerful disposition; his
habitual self-denial, and boundless generosity towards others; the
strength and constancy of his attachments; his kindness to his friends
and neighbours; his exemplary conduct in the relations of son, brother,
husband, father; his numerous charities; his benevolence towards all
men, and his ever active beneficence; these amiable qualities shone
so conspicuously in him, throughout his life, that, highly as he was
respected, he had the rare happiness to be yet more beloved."

There is no more engaging figure in American history, none more entirely
free from disfiguring idiosyncrasy, than the son of Thomas Marshall.

CHAPTER IX. Epilogue

In the brief period of twenty-seven months following the death of
Marshall the Supreme Court received a new Chief Justice and five new
Associate Justices. The effect of this change in personnel upon the
doctrine of the Court soon became manifest. In the eleventh volume of
Peters's "Reports," the first issued while Roger B. Taney was Chief
Justice, are three decisions of constitutional cases sustaining
state laws which on earlier argument Marshall had assessed as
unconstitutional. The first of these decisions gave what was designated
"the complete, unqualified, and exclusive" power of the State to
regulate its "internal police" the right of way over the "commerce
clause" *; the second practically nullified the constitutional
prohibition against "bills of credit" in deference to the same high
prerogative * *; the third curtailed the operation of the "obligation of
contracts" clause as a protection of public grants. * * * Story,
voicing "