It was John Marshall, of Fauquier county, a Virginian, who, by his great ability and firmness of character, brought the Supreme Court up from a tribunal of little importance and consequence to one of great dignity and to one equal in power and importance with the executive and legislative branches of the government. He did more--he established not only the fact that the Supreme Court was the proper tribunal to declare what was and what was not law, under the Constitution, but it was to set limits to the powers and prerogatives of the chief executive himself. In an address on the Supreme Court by Justice Brown in 1896, he said: "The Constitution had been adopted by the vote of the thirteen States of the Union, but its construction was a work scarcely less important than its original creation. With a large liberty of choice, guided by no precedents, and generally unhampered by his colleagues upon the bench, the great Chief Justice (Marshall) determined what was law by what he thought it ought to be, evolved from his own experience of the defects of the Articles of Confederation and from an innate consciousness of what the country required, a theory of construction which time has vindicated and the popular sentiment of succeeding generations has approved. In the case of Marbury against Madison, which arose at his very first term, he declared the judicial power to extend to the annulment of an act of Congress in conflict with the Constitution, a doctrine peculiar to this country, but so commending itself to the common sense of justice as to have been incorporated in the jurisprudence of every State in the Union. The lack of this check upon the action of the Legislature has wrecked the constitution of many a foreign State, and it is safe to say that our own would not have long survived a contrary decision. Had Marshall rendered no other service to the country, this of itself would have been sufficient to entitle him to its gratitude." And Judge A. W. Wallace, writing of Justice Marshall, said: "By his canons of construction he fortified the foundations of the Constitution and builded thereon the jurisprudence of the United States--whose opinions, nearly a century old, stand, like a great sea-wall, breasting every billow of political frenzy that has threatened to engulf the safety, permanence and perpetuity of our institutions." RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.