While attributing to Hamilton's financial measures most of the credit for improved conditions, Marshall frankly admits that other causes contributed to the new-found prosperity: By "progressive industry, ... the influence of the constitution on habits of thinking and acting," and especially by "depriving the states of the power to impair the obligation of contracts, or to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, the conviction was impressed on that portion of society which had looked to the government for relief from embarrassment, that personal exertions alone could free them from difficulties; and an increased degree of industry and economy was the natural consequence."[724]
Perhaps the most colorful pages of Marshall's entire work are those in which he describes the effect of the French Revolution on America, and the popular hostility to Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality[725] and to the treaty with Great Britain negotiated by John Jay.[726]
In his treatment of these subjects he reveals some of the sources of his distrust of the people. The rupture between the United States and the French Republic is summarized most inadequately. The greatest of Washington's state papers, the immortal "Farewell Address,"[727] is reproduced in full. The account of the X. Y. Z. mission is provokingly incomplete; that of American preparations for war with France is less disappointing. Washington's illness and death are described with feeling, though in stilted language; and Marshall closes his literary labors with the conventional analysis of Washington's character which the world has since accepted.[728]
Marshall's fifth volume was received with delight by the disgruntled Federalist leaders. A letter of Chancellor James Kent is typical of their comments. "I have just finished ... the last Vol. of Washington's Life and it is worth all the rest. It is an excellent History of the Government and Parties in this country from Vol. 3 to the death of the General."[729]
Although it had appeared too late to do them any harm at the election of 1804, the Republicans and Jefferson felt outraged by Marshall's history of the foundation period of the Government. Jefferson said nothing for a time, but the matter was seldom out of his thoughts. Barlow, it seems, had been laggard in writing a history from the Republican point of view, as Jefferson had urged him to do.