hall, in face of the rising tide of State Rights, felt himself
to be in a peculiar sense the official custodian. It is the principle
which he had in mind in his noble plea at the close of the case of
Gibbons vs. Ogden for a construction of the Constitution capable of
maintaining its vitality and usefulness:

"Powerful and ingenious minds [run his words], taking as postulates that
the powers expressly granted to the Government of the Union are to be
contracted by construction into the narrowest possible compass and that
the original powers of the States are to be retained if any possible
construction will retain them, may by a course of refined and
metaphysical reasoning... explain away the Constitution of our country
and leave it a magnificent structure indeed to look at, but totally
unfit for use. They may so entangle and perplex the understanding as
to obscure principles which were before thought quite plain, and induce
doubts where, if the mind were to pursue its own course, none would be
perceived. In such a case, it is peculiarly necessary to recur to safe
and fundamental principles."

CHAPTER VI. The Sanctity Of Contracts

Marshall's work was one of conservation in so far as it was concerned
with interpreting the Constitution in accord with the intention which
its framers had of establishing an efficient National Government. But
he found a task of restoration awaiting him in that great field of
Constitutional Law which defines state powers in relation to private
rights.

To provide adequate safeguards for property and contracts against state
legislative power was one of the most important objects of the framers,
if indeed it was not the most important. Consider, for instance, a
colloquy which occurred early in the Convention between Madison and
Sherman of Connecticut. The latter had enumerated "the objects of Union"
as follows: "First, defense against foreign danger; secondly, against
internal disputes and a resort to force; thirdly, treaties with foreign
nations; fourthly, regulating foreign commerce and drawing revenue from
it." To this statement Madison demurred. The objects mentioned were
important, he admitted, but he "combined with them the necessity of
providing more effectually for the securing of private rights and the
steady dispensation of justice. Interferences with these were evils
which had, more perhaps than anything else, produced this Convention."

Marshall's sympathy with this point of v