Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/95

Rh for three years in the Supreme Court of the District, made a very scathing speech, reviewing the decision of the Court. It may seem to your disfranchised readers quite presumptuous for one of their number to make those nine wise men on the bench, constituting the highest judicial authority in the United States, subjects for ridicule before an audience of the sovereign people; but, when they learn the decision in Mrs. Lockwood's case, they will be reassured as to woman's capacity to cope with their wisdom. "To arrive at the same conclusion, with these judges, it is not necessary," said Mrs. Lockwood, "to understand constitutional law, nor the history of English jurisprudence, nor the inductive or deductive modes of reasoning, as no such profound learning or processes of thought were involved in that decision, which was simply this: 'There is no precedent for admitting a woman to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, hence Mrs. Lockwood's application cannot be considered.'"

On this point Mrs. Lockwood showed that it was the glory of each generation to make its own precedents. As there was none for Eve in the garden of Eden, she argued there need be none for her daughters on entering the college, the church, or the courts. Blackstone—of whose works she inferred the judges were ignorant—gives several precedents for women in the English courts. As Mrs. Lockwood—tall, well-proportioned, with dark hair and eyes, regular features, in velvet dress and train, with becoming indignation at such injustice—marched up and down the platform and rounded out her glowing periods, she might have fairly represented the Italian Portia at the bar of Venice. No more effective speech was ever made on our platform.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose speeches are always replete with historical research, reviewed the action of the Republican party toward woman from the introduction of the word "male" into the fourteenth amendment of the constitution down to the celebration of our national birthday in Philadelphia, when the declaration of the mothers was received in contemptuous silence, while Dom Pedro and other foreign dignitaries looked calmly on. Mrs. Gage makes as dark a chapter for the Republicans as Mrs. Lockwood for the judiciary, or Mrs. Blake for the church. Mrs. B. had been an attentive listener during the trial of the Rev. Isaac See before the presbytery of Newark, N. J., hence she felt moved to give the convention a chapter of ecclesiastical history, showing the struggles through which the church was passing with the irrepressible woman in the pulpit. Mrs. Blake's biblical interpretations and expositions proved conclusively that Scott's and Clark's commentaries would at no distant day be superceded by standard works from woman's standpoint. It is not to be supposed that women ever can have fair play as long as men only write and interpret the Scriptures and make and expound the laws. Why would it not be a good idea for women to leave these conservative gentlemen alone in the churches? How sombre they would look with the flowers, feathers, bright ribbons and shawls all gone—black coats only kneeling and standing—and with the deep-toned organ swelling up, the solemn bass voice heard only in awful solitude; not one soprano note to rise above the low, dull wail to fill the arched roof with triumphant melody! One such ex-