Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/139

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Mr. : Mr. President, the best evidence that members of the legal profession have no jealousy against the admission of women to the bar who have the proper learning, is shown by this document which I hold in my hand, signed by one hundred and fifty-five lawyers of the District of Columbia, embracing the most eminent men in the ranks of that profession. That there is no jealousy or consideration of impropriety on the part of the various States is shown by the fact that the legislatures of many of the States have recently admitted women to the bar; and my own State, California, has passed such a law within the last week or two; Illinois has done the same thing; so have Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and North Carolina; and Wyoming, Utah and the District of Columbia among the territories have also done it. There is no reason in principle why women should not be admitted to this profession or the profession of medicine, provided they have the learning to enable them to be useful in those professions, and useful to themselves. Where is the propriety in opening our colleges, our higher institutions of learning, or any institutions of learning, to women, and then when they have acquired in the race with men the cultivation for higher employment, to shut them out? There certainly is none. We should either restrict the laws allowing the liberal education of women, or, we should allow them to exercise the talents which are cultivated at the public expense in such departments of enterprise and knowledge as will be useful to society and will enable them to gain a living. The tendency is in this direction. I believe the time has passed to consider it a ridiculous thing for women to appear upon the lecture platform or in the pulpit, for women to attend to the treatment of diseases as physicians and nurses, to engage in any literary employment, or appear at the bar. Some excellent women in the United States are now practicing at the bar, acceptably received before courts and juries; and when they have conducted their cases to a successful issue or an unsuccessful one in any court below, why should the United States courts to which an appeal may be taken and where their adversaries of the male sex may follow the case up, why should these courts be closed to these women? * * *

Mr. : I should like to ask the senator from California if the courts of the United States cannot admit them upon their own motion anyhow?

Mr. : I think there is nothing in the law prohibiting it, but the Supreme Court of the United States recently in passing upon the question of the admission of a certain lady, said that until some legislation took place they did not like to depart from the precedent set in England, or until there was more general practice among the States. The learned chief-justice, perhaps, did not sufficiently reflect when he stated that there were no English precedents. The fact is that Elizabeth herself sat in the Aula Regia and administered the law, and in both Scotland and England women have fulfilled the function of judges. The instances are not numerous but they are well established in history. I myself have had my