upon the President to carry it into effect by such means as happened to be within his power.  The speech which Marshall delivered on that occasion is said to have been the only one that he ever revised for publication.  It “at once placed him,” as Mr. Justice Story has well said, “in the front rank of constitutional statesmen, silenced opposition, and settled forever the points of national law upon which the controversy hinged.”  So convincing was it that Mr. Gallatin, who had been requested by Mr. Livingston to reply, declined to make the attempt, declaring the argument to be unanswerable.

In May, 1800, on the reorganization of President Adams’s Cabinet, Marshall unexpectedly received the appointment of Secretary of War.  He declined it; but the office of Secretary of State also having become vacant, he accepted that position, which he held till the fourth of the following March.  Of his term as Secretary of State, which lasted less than ten months, little has been said; nor was it distinguished by any event of unusual importance, save the conclusion of the convention with France of Sept. 30, 1800, the negotiation of which, at Paris, was already in progress, under instructions given by his predecessor, when he entered the Department of State.  The war between France and Great Britain, growing out of the French Revolution, was still going on.  The questions with which he was required to deal were not new; and while he exhibited in the discussion of them his usual strength and lucidity of argument, he had little opportunity to display a capacity for negotiation.  Only a few of his State papers have been printed, nor are those that have been published of special importance.  He gave instructions to our minister to Great Britain, in relation to commercial restrictions, impressments, and orders in council violative of the law of nations; to our minister to France, in regard to the violations of neutral rights perpetrated by that government; and to our minister to Spain, concerning infractions of international law committed, chiefly by French authorities, within the Spanish jurisdiction.  Of these various State papers the most notable was that which he addressed on Sept. 20, 1800, to Rufus King, then United States Minister at London.  Reviewing in this instruction the policy which his government had pursued, and to which it still adhered, in the conflict between the European powers, he said:—­

“The United States do not hold themselves in any degree responsible to France or to Britain for their negotiations with the one or the other of these powers; but they are ready to make amicable and reasonable explanations with either....  It has been the object of the American government, from the commencement of the present war, to preserve between the belligerent powers an exact neutrality....  The aggressions, sometimes of one and sometimes of another belligerent power, have forced us to contemplate and prepare for war as a probable event.  We have repelled, and we will continue to repel, injuries not doubtful in their nature and hostilities not to be misunderstood.  But this is a situation of necessity, not of choice.  It is one in which we are placed, not by our own acts, but by the acts of others, and which we [shall] change so soon as the conduct of others will permit us to change it.”