he National Bank, and
declared a state law imposing a tax on a branch of the Bank
unconstitutional and void. In the course of his opinion, which followed
much the same line of reasoning that Alexander Hamilton had employed,
Marshall stated in classic phraseology the doctrine of liberal
construction. Holding that the Constitution was not a code of law, but a
document marking out in large characters the powers of government, he
sought, among the enumerated powers, not the lesser, but the great
substantive, powers necessary to the purposes of the Union. These
substantive powers, however, carry with them many incidental (Hamilton
said _resulting_) powers, among which a choice may freely be made to
achieve the desired and legitimate end. "Let the end be legitimate,"
said Marshall, "let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all
means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end,
which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the
Constitution, are constitutional." In an earlier decision (_United
States_ v. _Fisher_, 1804), indeed, Marshall had refused to concede the
force of the argument that the Federal Government was clothed only with
the powers indispensably necessary to exercise powers expressly granted
to it. "Congress must possess the choice of means which are in fact
conducive to the exercise of a power granted by the Constitution."

The cumulative effect of these decisions was to provoke a violent
reaction in Virginia. Under the pen-name "Algernon Sidney," Judge Roane
renewed his attacks upon the Chief Justice in violent and at times
offensive language. "The judgment before us," he declared, referring to
the case of _Cohens_ v. _Virginia_, "will not be less disastrous in its
consequences, than any of these memorable judgments [of the time of
Charles I]. It completely negatives the idea, that the American States
have a real existence, or are to be considered, in any sense, as
sovereign and independent States." It seemed to Jefferson that the
powerful arguments of Roane completely "pulverized" every word which had
been uttered by John Marshall. John Taylor of Caroline, however, was the
philosophical exponent of this reactionary movement. In his
_Construction Construed_ (1820), _Tyranny Unmasked_ (1822), and _New
Views of the Constitution_ (1823), he pointed out the manifest tendency
of the decisions of the Supreme Court and suggested the "state veto" as
the remedy against us