all the managers of the House put together. Luther Martin of Maryland - of medium height, broadshouldered, near-sighted, absent-minded, shabbily attired, harsh of voice, now sixty-one years old, with gray hair beginning to grow thin and a face crimsoned by the brandy which he continually imbibed was the dominating figure of this historic contest.1

1 See Story's description of Martin three years later, Story to Fay, Feb. 16, 1808, Story, 1, 163-64.

Luther Martin well illustrates the fleeting nature of the fame of even the greatest lawyers. For two generations he was "an acknowledged leader of the American bar," and his preeminence in that noble profession was brightened by fine public service. Yet within a few years after his death, he was totally forgotten, and today few except historical students know that such a man ever lived. Martin began his practice of the law when twenty-three years of age and his success was immediate and tremendous. His legal learning was prodigious his memory phenomenal.

Apparently, Martin was the heaviest drinker of that period of heavy drinking men. The inexplicable feature of his continuous excesses was that his mighty drinking seldom appeared to affect his professional efficiency. Only once in his long and active career did intoxication interfere with his work in court. (See infra, 586.)

Passionate in his loves and hates, he abhorred Jefferson with all the ardor of his violent nature; and his favorite denunciation of any bad man was, "Sir! he is as great a scoundrel as Thomas Jefferson.'

For thirty years Martin was the Attorney-General of Maryland. He was the most powerful member of his State in the Convention that framed the National Constitution which he refused to sign, opposing the ratification of it in arguments of such signal ability that forty years afterward John C. Calhoun quarried from them the material for his famous Nullification speeches.

When, however, the Constitution was ratified and became the supreme law of the land, Martin, with characteristic wholeheartedness, supported it loyally and championed the Administrations of Washington and Adams.

He was the lifelong friend of the impeached justice, to whom he owed his first appointment as Attorney-General of Maryland as well as great assistance and encouragement in the beginning of his career. Chase and he were also boon companions, each filled with admiration for the talents and attainments of the other, and strikingly similar in

Weary and harried as he was, Randolph opened the trial with a speech of some skill. He contrasted the conduct of Chase in the trial of Callender with that of Marshall in a trial in Richmond in 1804 at which Marshall had presided. "Sir," said Randolph, "in the famous case of Logwood,' whereat the Chief Justice of the United States presided, I was present, being one of the grand jury who found a true bill against him... The government was as deeply interested in arresting the career of this dangerous and atrocious criminal, who had aimed his blow against the property of every man in society, as it could be in bringing to punishment a weak and worthless scribbler [Callender].

But how had Marshall acted in the conduct of that trial? "Although," continued Randolph, "much testimony was offered by the prisoner, which did by no means go to his entire exculpation, although their courage and fidelity to friends and principles. So the lawyer threw himself into the fight for the persecuted judge with all his astonishing strength.

When, in his old age, he was stricken with paralysis, the Maryland Legislature placed a tax of five dollars annually on all lawyers for his support. After Martin's death the bench and bar of Baltimore passed a resolution that "we will wear mourning for the space of thirty days." (American Law Review, 1, 279.)

No biography of Martin has ever been written; but there are two excellent sketches of his life, one by Ashley M. Gould in Great American Lawyers: Lewis, 1, 3-46; and the other by Henry P. Goddard in the Md. Hist. Soc. Fund. Pub. No. 24.

1 Annals, 8th Cong. 2d Sess. 160-61. The case to which Randolph refers was that of the United States vs. Thomas Logwood, indicted in April, 1801, for counterfeiting. Logwood was tried in the United States Circuit Court at Richmond during June, 1804. Marshall, sitting with District Judge Cyrus Griffin, presided. Notwithstanding Marshall's liberality, Logwood was convicted and Marshall sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment at hard labor. (Order Book No. 4, 464, Records, U.S. Circuit Court, Richmond.)

much of that testimony was of a very questionable nature, none of it was declared inadmissable." Marshall suffered it "to go to the jury, who were left to judge of its weight and credibility"; nor had he required "any interrogatories to the witnesses .. to be reduced to writing," - such a thing never had been done in Virginia before the tyrannical ruling of Chase in the trial of Callender.

"No, Sir!" he cried. "The enlightened man who presided in Logwood's case knew that, although the basest and vilest of criminals, he was entitled to justice, equally with the most honorable member of society." Marshall "did not avail himself of the previous and great discoveries in criminal law, of this respondent [Chase]"; Marshall "admitted the prisoner's testimony to go to the jury"; Marshall "never thought it his right or his duty to require questions to be reduced to writing"; Marshall "gave the accused a fair trial according to law and usage, without any innovation or departure from the established rules of criminal jurisprudence in his country."

Marshall's gentle manner and large-minded, softspoken rulings as a trial judge were thus adroitly made to serve as an argument for the condemnation of his associate, and for his own undoing if Chase should be convicted. Randolph denounced "the monstrous pretension that an act to be impeachable must be indictable. Where? In the Federal Courts? There, not even robbery and murder are indictable."

A judge could not, under the National law, be indicted for conducting a National court while drunk,