In 1828, Marshall presided, in Virginia, over a convention to promote internal improvements. On this subject he held and freely expressed views, such as are now generally entertained, as to the power of the general government, and the expediency of exerting them.[43] In 1829, he allowed himself to be elected to the Virginia convention for revising the state constitution, and took an active part in the debates. “Tall, in a long surtout of blue, with a face of genius and an eye of fire,” is the description that is given of him in the convention. On several questions he influenced greatly the course of the convention, especially in continuing, for a score of years to come, the judicial tenure of office during good behavior. Marshall’s membership of the society of Free Masons is sometimes spoken of. It should be said that he lived to condemn that organization. During the political excitement which followed the abduction of Morgan, he was asked for information as to some praise of Freemasonry which had been publicly attributed to him, and replied, in October, 1833, that he was not particularly interested in the anti-masonic excitement. “The agitations which convulse the North did not pass the Potomac. Consequently ... I felt no inclination to volunteer in a distant conflict, in which the wounds that might be received would not be soothed by the consoling reflection that he suffered in the performance of a necessary duty.” And he added that he had “never affirmed that there was any positive good or ill in the institution itself.” This cautious letter is illustrated by an earlier one, in July, 1833, in which, writing confidentially to Edward Everett, he says that he became a Mason soon after he entered the army, and afterwards continued in the society because his neighbors did. “I followed the crowd for a time, without attaching the least importance to its object or giving myself the trouble to inquire why others did. It soon lost its attraction, and though there are several lodges in the city of Richmond, I have not been in one of them for more than forty years, except on an invitation to accompany General Lafayette, nor have I been a member of one of them for more than thirty. It was impossible not to perceive the useless pageantry of the whole exhibition.” And he adds that he has become convinced “that the institution ought to be abandoned, as one capable of producing much evil and incapable of producing any good which might not be effected by safe and open means.”[44]