The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902, February 14, 1901, Page 6, Image 6

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Conservative *
The populist
QUEER. lenders nncl jour-
unls of Nebraska
are universally denunciatory of the
venality of the American voter and with
unanimity they have time and again
avowed that their peerless presidential
candidate in 1890 and in 1900 wns
defeated with O. O. D. ballots paid for
by the republican party. And it is ox-
ceedingty queer and paradoxical that the
same shepherds of the flocks of the com
mon people now howl for an election of
United States senators by a direct popu
lar vote so as to secure uiicomipted
ballots and incorruptible men.
Even the peerless himself at Salem , in
Illinois , last summer proclaimed that the
election if hold then while lie was
speaking in his native town would re
sult in the triumph of populism. But
that the republicans were getting
together a mammoth money pile with
which to buy voters and therefore as
his followers were a salable and selling
set ho could not feel quite certain of
even his own election. Thus it is held
that voters for presidential electors are
purchasable and that voters for senators
would bo pure as the snow and incor
ruptible as the angels. They do not
know enough , according to Bryanarohy ,
to elect honest men to the state legis
lature , but they would be experts in
selecting honest men for the United
States senate.
A year ago the
AUSTRIA AND Gorman Reichstag
AMERICAN MEAT. passed the meat
bill which restrict
ed the importation of American meat
and materially affected our export trade ,
greatly to the injury of American fann
ers. The action of the Reichstag was
in retaliation of American legislation.
Shortly before this congress passed an
act placing a higher duty upon the im
portation of sugar than the rate stipu
lated in a commercial treaty between
Germany and the United States , with
out first having had the senate formally
abrogate the treaty. This Germany re
sented. The feeling engendered on
account of our discourtesy , together
with our general policy of erecting
barriers against foreign trade and main
taining a policy of commercial isolation ,
were responsible for the practical ex
clusion of our meat -from Germany.
Austria is now agitating similar legis
lation. The Austrian butchers associa
tion is making an effort to get the'
chambers of commerce throughout the
empire to petition the ministers of agri
culture to prohibit the importation of
American meat.
The association has been successful in
securing the co-operation of the chambers
of commerce. It
'
Foreign Markets. is quite probable
. . that the Austrian
government will accede to these de-
mauds and the American hog will soon
bo decreed a "persona non grata" in
another European market. The Ameri
can fanner is gradually being educated
and perhaps , after a few more European
countries follow the German precedent ,
he will become thoroughly convinced
that a protective tariff does not promote
his welfare. Exclusion at home means
restriction or exclusion abroad. Ameri
can products cannot enter foreign ports
under favorable regulations unless we
accord like privileges to those to whom
we wish to sell. To shut foreign goods
out of our ports is to keep American
goods out of a large and growing foreign
market.
JOHN MARSHALL.
[ Address of OhaiiesS. Lobingier of the
Omaha bar at the State University
Marshall memorial exercises , February
4 , 1901. ]
"To me the most significant fact in
Marshall's career is the illustration it
affords of the power and influence of
the lawyer and judge in American
public life. We often hear it said that
the lawyer , to be a factor in public
affairs , must enter politics , that the
mere lawyer and the mere judge must
be content to live in comparative retire
ment , and to exert little influence on
society ; Marshall's career is a contra
diction of all this. He never was a
politician in the popular sense. His life
was devoted to the law and not to
politics ; and yet , his appointment to the
bench probably changed the entire
course of American history.
"When Marshall entered upon his
judgeship , the old Federal party to which
ho belonged , was about to pass from
power forever. Its leaders had been
defeated at the polls ; its policy and prin
ciples had been repudiated ; and one ,
who like Marshall , was identified with
it , seemed wedded to a hopeless.cause. .
But while the politicians and party
leaders of the opposition were exulting
in their , apparent victory while they
were doyotiug themselves to the petty
strifes of partisan politics , John Marshall
was slowly engrafting the rejected prin
ciples of Federalism upon the juris
prudence of .our country. Marshall
came to the bench with profound con
victions concerning the nature and
powers of the Federal government. He
believed that these powers ought to bo
strengthened and extended and that the
constitution ought to bo construed
liberally to that end. And whenever
occasion offered , as in the case of Gibbons
vs. Ogden , 9 Wheat. , he caused these
convictions to become the law of the
land. In that case , you remember , he
refused to take the strict view that the
power of congress to regulate commerce
was confined to mere traffic. He gave
'commerce' the broader meaning of
communication and thus brought within
the pale of Federal jurisdiction even an
humble ferry line across the Hudson
River. And so all through the more
than a third of a century , during which
Marshall presided over the court , he was
re-writing the constitution. While
politicians wore concerned with the
affairs of a day ; while statesmen even ,
were legislating for a few years at most ,
this man , who never aspired to be more
than a lawyer and a judge , was framing
rules which would control the lives and
liberties of his countrymen for genera
tions to come.
Created * American Constitutional Law.
"Marshall's decisions have not alto
gether escaped criticism. They were
sometimes denounced by contempora
ries ; even posterity has not been
unanimous in their approval. The editor
of the American Law Review , for ex
ample , Seymour D. Thompson , is an
incessant critic of the decision in the
Dartmouth College case. But the fact
remains that the difference between the
constitution at the beginning of the last
century and the constitution today is
largely duo to the labors of John
Marshall. And this fact demonstrates
as nothing else can , the dignity , import
ance and power of the judiciaroffioe.
"Sir Frederick Pollock in his Oxford
Essays , a book which may be read with
interest and profit by all law students ,
as well as lawyers , has a fine passage in
which he' pictures a world in which
dwell the great jurists of all time , among
whom he ranks Marshall. 'In that
world , ' he says , 'Moses and Manu sit
enthroned side by side , guiding the
dawning sense of justice and righteous
ness of the two master races of the earth.
Solon , Scalvola and Ulpiau walk as
familiar friends with Blackstone and
Kent , with Story and Marshall. While
the crimes of a Bonaparte and the
bigotry of a Justinian are alike forgotten
because at their bidding the rough
places in the ways of justice were made
plain. '
"Of the long line of judges who have
built up the mighty fabric of Anglo-
American law , perhaps only one can be
compared to Marshall in the extent and
importance of his contributions. Mans
field , who for twenty-eight years pre
sided over the King's Bench , created
the commercial law of England.
Marshall created the constitutional law
of America. Of the sixty-one constitu
tional decisions rendered by the supreme
court , from the time of its organization
until Marshall's death , he himself wrote
thirty-six. The next highest number
written by Story was only eleven.
"Students of the law , working daily
among the books containing these de
cisions drawing perennial inspiration
from the opinions of Marshall , may well
apply to him the epitaph used with less
truth of others ,
" 'If you seek his monument , look around. " "
, ; 7