We have told you how Webster--being at the time the very antipodes of what he was afterwards when he talked with Bosworth as to the Rhode Island case--missed the true and cardinal point in the Dartmouth college case, and how the powers, after having Marshall to establish it, gave all the glory of the great accomplishment to Webster. We come now to Gibbons _v._ Ogden, argued in 1824, in which the latter made far more than ample amends for his shortcoming, and taught even the great Marshall how to decide. New York State had given Fulton and Livingston for a term exclusive steam navigation of all its waters, and Webster was to maintain that the grant impugned the federal constitution and was therefore invalid. The question was _res integra_, without analogies which often help us forlorn advocates who cannot find a precedent and are utterly without any literature suggesting the _ratio decidendi_. I know I cannot explain to a layman how such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typical Anglo-American judge, who has walked all his life by precedent and not by sight. Further, Webster's side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be hardly too much to say, the public conscience; either one of which generally sways courts more powerfully than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of complete advocates. The only thing which Webster could oppose to these formidable odds was just a clause of a sentence of the constitution, this clause being only of twelve words when even the belonging context is read into it,[77] and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage, but neither well-considered nor of any particular force. Out of this he constructed such a perfect and wise doctrine of the immunity of our interstate commerce from local attack and restraint that every succeeding generation has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent additions and extensions of importance are all manifest conclusions from the promises which he made good. Reading and reflecting for writing my "American Law Studies" familiarized me with a few instances in which a man has left a lasting impress upon the development of the law (some of which instances will be mentioned in a moment). Thus I was led to meditate Webster's work in this case; and it becomes an increasing wonder to me. Read what his biographer tells of the unfavorable circumstances of the preparation for the argument and how he overcame them by superhuman effort. Read also his own account as given by Harvey, how Wirt, his associate, older and of much more experience in that court, disparaged the ground upon which he said he should stand, and proposed another; and how Marshall drank in every word of Webster's argument, and afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion.