If we look at these great cases merely with reference to their effect upon the history and development of the country, they are of the very first importance. When one names Marbury _v._ Madison, the first case where the Supreme Court held an act of Congress invalid, and the only one in Marshall’s time; Fletcher _v._ Peck and Dartmouth College _v._ Woodward, where legislative grants and an act of incorporation are held to be contracts, protected by the United States Constitution against state legislation impairing their obligation; and New Jersey _v._ Wilson, holding that a legislative exemption from taxation is also a contract protected in the same way;--one sees the tremendous importance of the decisions. Of coarse we are not to confound this powerful effect of a judgment, or the moral approbation with which we may be inclined to view it, with the intrinsic merit of the reasoning or the legal soundness of the conclusions. It is not uncommon to speak of the reasoning in Marbury _v._ Madison and Dartmouth College _v._ Woodward with the greatest praise. But neither of these opinions is entitled to rank with Marshall’s greatest work. The very common view to which I have alluded is partly referable to the fallacy which Wordsworth once remarked upon when a friend mentioned “The Happy Warrior” as being the greatest of his poems. “No,” said the poet, “you are mistaken; your judgment is affected by your moral approval of the lines.” If we regard at once the greatness of the questions at issue in the particular case, the influence of the opinion, and the large method and clear and skillful manner in which it is worked out, there is nothing so fine as the opinion in McCulloch _v._ Maryland, given at the February term, 1819. The questions were, first, whether the United States could constitutionally incorporate a bank; and, second, if it could, whether a State might tax the operations of the bank; as, in this instance, by requiring it to use stamped paper for its notes. The bank was sustained and the tax condemned. In working this out, it was laid down that while the United States is merely a government of enumerated powers, and these do not in terms include the granting of an incorporation, yet it is a government whose powers, though limited in number, are in general supreme, and also adequate to the great national purposes for which they are given; that these great purposes carry with them the power of adopting such means, not prohibited by the Constitution, as are fairly conducive to the end; and that incorporating a bank is not forbidden, and is useful for several ends. Further, the paramount relation of the national government, whose valid laws the Constitution makes the supreme law of the land, forbids the States to tax, or to “retard, impede, burden, or in any way control” the operations of the government in any of its instrumentalities.