Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/138

108 or any one of her accomplished daughters should ask to be heard at the bar of the Court of the Queen's Bench, the practice of which the United States Supreme Court has set up as its model, that she would be refused?

Blackstone recounts that Ann, Countess of Pembroke, held the office of sheriff of Westmoreland and exercised its duties in person. At the assizes at Appleby she sat with the judges on the bench. (See Coke on Lit., p. 326.) The Scotch sheriff is properly a judge, and by the statute 20, Geo., ii, c. 43, he must be a lawyer of three years standing.

Eleanor, Queen of Henry III. of England, in the year 1253, was appointed lady-keeper of the great seal, or the supreme chancellor of England, and sat in the Aula Regia, or King's Court. She in turn appointed Kilkenny, arch-deacon of Coventry, as the sealer of writs and common-law instruments, but the more important matters she executed in person.

Queen Elizabeth held the great seal at three several times during her remarkable reign. After the death of Lord-keeper Bacon she presided for two months in the Aula Regia.

It is claimed that "admission to the bar constitutes an office." Every woman postmaster, pension agent and notary public throughout the land is a bonded officer of the government. The Western States have elected women as school superintendents and appointed them as enrolling and engrossing clerks in their several legislatures, and as State librarians. Of what use are our seminaries and colleges for women if after they have passed through the curriculum of the schools there is for them no preferment, and no emolument; no application of the knowledge of the arts and sciences acquired, and no recognition of the excellence attained?

But this country, now in the second year of the second century of her history, is no longer in her leading strings, that she should look to Mother England for a precedent to do justice to the daughters of the land. She had to make a precedent when the first male lawyer was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. Ah! this country is one that has not hesitated when the necessity has arisen to make precedents and write them in blood. There was no precedent for this free republican government and the war of the rebellion; no precedent for the emancipation of the slave; no precedent for the labor strikes of last summer. The more extended practice, and the more extended public opinion referred to by the learned chancellor have already been accomplished. Ah! that very opinion, telegraphed throughout the land by the associated press, brought back the response of the people as on the wings of the wind asking you for that special act now so nearly consummated, which shall open this professional door to women.

Attorney and Solicitor. Washington, D. C., March 7, 1878.

Mrs. Lockwood's bill, with Senator Edmond's adverse report, was reached on the Senate calendar April 22, 1878, and provoked a spirited discussion. Hon. A. A. Sargent, made a gallant fight in favor of the bill, introducing the following amendment: