Of the implications of the accomplishment of the great Chief Justice for the political life of the country, let De Tocqueville speak again: "Scarcely any political question arises in the United States which is not resolved sooner, or later, into a judicial question. Hence all parties are obliged to borrow in their daily controversies the ideas, and even the language peculiar to judicial proceedings.... The language of the law thus becomes, in some measure, a vulgar tongue; the spirit of law, which is produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually penetrates beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it descends to the lowest classes, so that at last the whole people contract the habits and the tastes of the judicial magistrate." In one respect, however, De Tocqueville erred. American "legalism," that curious infusion of politics with jurisprudence, that mutual consultation of public opinion and established principles, which in the past has so characterized the course of discussion and legislation in America, is traceable to origins long antedating Marshall's chief justiceship. On the other hand, there is no public career in American history which ever built so largely upon this pervasive trait of the national outlook as did Marshall's, or which has contributed so much to render it effective in palpable institutions. CHAPTER VIII Among Friends And Neighbors It is a circumstance of no little importance that the founder of American Constitutional Law was in tastes and habit of life a simple countryman. To the establishment of National Supremacy and the Sanctity of Contracts Marshall brought the support not only of his office and his command of the art of judicial reasoning but also the whole-souled democracy and unpretentiousness of the fields. And it must be borne in mind that Marshall was on view before his contemporaries as a private citizen rather more of the time, perhaps, than as Chief Justice. His official career was, in truth, a somewhat leisurely one. Until 1827 the term at Washington rarely lasted over six weeks and subsequently not over ten weeks. In the course of his thirty-four years on the Bench, the Court handed down opinions in over 1100 cases, which is probably about four times the number of opinions now handed down at a single term; and of this number Marshall spoke for the Court in about half the cases. Toward the middle of March, he left Washington for Richmond, and on the 22d of May opened court in his own circuit. Then, three weeks later, if the docket permitted, he went on to Raleigh to hold court there for a few days. The summers he usually spent on the estate which he inherited from his father at Fauquier, or else he went higher up into the mountains to escape malaria. But by the 22d of November at the latest he was back once more in Richmond for court, and at the end of December for a second brief term he again drove to Raleigh in his high-wheeled gig.