majority of whom stood ready to follow his lead, and by the almost unbounded confidence of the executive, he for a season carried out his plans with great success, and enjoyed that momentary confidence which produced his jubilant remark to Mr. Jefferson. But he soon found that, like the scriptural foolish man, he had built his house upon the sand, and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew, and it fell. Within the short period that he remained in the Government, some of the measures that he had brought into existence were already discredited by an offended public sentiment, and toward the close of Mr. Adams' administration--one still guided by his superintending genius--the political fabric which he had created was, by the same power, blown into atoms. It was this great overthrow that brought home to him the unwelcome conviction that other constitutional foundations than those which the Federal Convention, the people, and the States had laid, no man, without the same aid, could lay. It presented to his mind, under circumstances the most impressive, a truth which he had overlooked in the eagerness of his pursuit after power, viz., that the people were enabled by the popular provisions of the Constitution in respect to the executive and legislative departments, to break down the greater part of such structures as those which he had reared, by dismissing from their places those who had assisted in their construction, and substituting others, who, knowing their wishes, would feel it their interest to respect them; and what was passing before his eyes afforded the most reliable evidence that they would not be slow in the exercise of the rights that belonged to them. This was the handwriting on the wall that foretold the fate of all his plans, and called forth, during the brief period of his subsequent existence, his continued denunciation of the Constitution as "a frail and worthless fabric." It was at the moment of this great disaster, when dismay prevailed in the Federal councils, whilst Hamilton was brooding over a defective Constitution which he knew the States would not alter to suit his wishes and which it was evident the people would not permit him to pervert, that the Federal party was conducted to the judicial department of the Government, as to an ark of future safety which the Constitution placed beyond the reach of public opinion. The man who planned this retreat was John Marshall--a statesman of great power, one who partook largely of Hamilton's genius, was better acquainted with the character of the people, and possessed more control over his own actions.