animosity, with which the opposing opinions were maintained." The dissolution or continuance of the Union, was freely discussed: one party boldly advocating the former, as necessary to prevent the destruction of State-sovereignty; the other party pleading for UNION, as not only the sole cure for the immeasurable ills which were then afflicting the land, but as indispensable to the preservation of Liberty itself, in the several States. And _Union_, it was alleged, could not be preserved but by a more vigorous central government. Mr. Marshall, not then thirty years old, shared largely in the discussions which shook both the Legislative hall, and the popular assemblies, of Virginia, on this great question. Mr. Madison, with whom he served several years in the House of Delegates, fought "side by side, and shoulder to shoulder" with him, through the contest: and "the friendship, thus formed between them, was never extinguished. The recollection of their co-operation at that period served, when other measures had widely separated them from each other, still to keep up a lively sense of each other's merits. Nothing, indeed, could be more touching to an ingenuous mind, than to hear from their lips, in their latter years, expressions of mutual respect and confidence; or to witness their earnest testimony to the talents, the virtues, and the services of each other."[7] [Footnote 7: Judge Story.] It was in these debates, that Mr. Marshall's mind acquired the skill in political discussion, which afterwards distinguished him, and which would of itself have made him conspicuous as a parliamentarian, had not that talent been overshadowed by his renown in a more soberly illustrious, though less dazzling career. Here, too, it was, that he conceived that deep dread of disunion, and that profound conviction of the necessity for closer bonds between the States, which gave the coloring to the whole texture of his opinions, upon federal politics in after life.