Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 36.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[304] the ‘cheap defense of nations.’ It comes back to us like a picture of some far off, fabled, golden age. It is the story of a society, simply and soundly true; not a new affirmation, but a reaffirmation of those peaks of the past, which are freedom's Sinai. The ideal of that old day stood in direct relation to daily life. It was not a profession. It was a vocation. Men had faith in each other and were justified in having it. Love for Commonwealth and willingness to die for it made a moral unit of their minds. A whole world were the unfair exchange for that clean and wholesome soul. Will you compare it with the ‘prosperity’ which, pointing to ‘rake off,’ ‘honest graft,’ and the like, says these are my jewels? There were free men once who held it prosperous to be just. A country which is loved for the honor, the noble sympathy, that is in it—ah! how much better than the country, which is loved for the corruption which is in it! After all, may not magnitude be a poor swap for magnanimity? It is the virtue, not the bigness, of a State which is greatness. To govern honestly is more than to misgovern widely.

The convention of 1829-30, in which Marshall's words were spoken, was the arena of contest between sections having, as they deemed, antagonistic interests; the West having the numbers, the East the property; a struggle of the West to acquire, of the East to retain, power; a geographical difference in which East and West stood to each other somewhat, as in another war of sections, the South stood to the North.