"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." For a month Marshall held both the office of Secretary of State and that of Chief Justice; but at the close of John Adams' administration he devoted himself exclusively to his judicial duties, never performing thereafter any other public service, save that late in life he acted as a member of the convention to revise the Constitution of Virginia. It is an interesting fact that, prior to his appointment as Chief Justice, Marshall had appeared only once before the Supreme Court, and on that occasion he was unsuccessful. This appearance was in the case of Ware _v_. Hylton, which was a suit brought by a British creditor to compel the payment by a citizen of Virginia of a pre-Revolutionary debt, in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of peace. During the Revolutionary War various States, among which was Virginia, passed acts of sequestration and confiscation, by which it was provided that, if the American debtor should pay into the State treasury the amount due to his British creditor, such payment should constitute an effectual plea in bar to a subsequent action for the recovery of the debt. When the representatives of the United States and Great Britain met in Paris to negotiate for peace, the question of the confiscated debts became a subject of controversy, especially in connection with that of the claims of the loyalists for the confiscation of their estates. Franklin and Jay, though they did not advocate the policy of confiscating debts, hesitated, chiefly on the ground of a want of authority in the existing national government to override the acts of the States. But when John Adams arrived on the scene, the situation soon changed. By one of those dramatic strokes of which he was a master, he ended the discussion by suddenly declaring, in the presence of the British plenipotentiaries, that, so far as he was concerned, he "had no notion of cheating anybody;" that the question of paying debts and the question of compensating the loyalists were two; and that, while he was opposed to