They, having the great opportunity of initiative, organized it in all its branches, giving it an administrative machinery that in the main endures to-day; established the doctrine of national neutrality toward European conflicts (although the variance of Federalist and Republican opinion on this point was largely factitious); and fixed the practice of a liberal construction of the Constitution,) - not only by Congress, but above all by the United States Supreme Court, which, under the lead of John Marshall (who had been appointed chief-justice by Pres.
