with all the precedents of the law we are sworn to administer, would be an act of judicial usurpation deserving of the gravest censure. If we could disregard, in this matter, the authority of those unwritten usages which make the great body of our law, we might do so in any other, and the dearest rights of person and property would become a matter of mere judicial discretion.
But it is said the 28th section of chapter 90 of the Revised Statutes of 1845 provides that, whenever any person is referred to in the statute by words importing the masculine gender, females as well as males shall be deemed to be included. But the 36th section of the same chapter provides that this rule of construction shall not apply where there is anything in the subject or context repugnant to such construction. That is the case in the present instance.
In the view we have taken of this question the argument drawn by the applicant from the Constitution of the United States has no pertinency.
In conclusion we would add that, while we are constrained to refuse this application, we respect the motive which prompts it, and we entertain a profound sympathy with those efforts which are being so widely made to reasonably enlarge the field for the exercise of woman's industry and talent. While those theories which are popularly known as "woman's rights" can not be expected to meet with a very cordial acceptance among the members of a profession which, more than any other, inclines its followers, if not to stand immovable upon the ancient ways, at least to make no hot haste in measures of reform, still all right-minded men must gladly see new spheres of action opened to woman, and greater inducements offered her to seek the highest and widest culture. There are some departments of the legal profession in which she can appropriately labor.
Whether, on the other hand, to engage in the hot strifes of the Bar, in the presence of the public, and with momentous verdicts the prizes of the struggle would not tend to destroy the deference and delicacy with which it is the pride of our ruder sex to treat her, is a matter certainly worthy of her consideration. But the important question is, what effect the presence of women as barristers in our courts would have upon the administration of justice, and the question can be satisfactorily answered only in the light of experience.
If the Legislature shall choose to remove the existing barriers and authorize us to issue licenses equally to men and women, we shall cheerfully obey, trusting to the good sense and sound judgment of women themselves to seek those departments of the practice in which they can labor without reasonable objection.
Application denied.
The opinion will be best understood by reading our arguments first, and knowing all the points made before the court. We have not the space to review the opinion in this issue, but shall do so at some future day, and will simply say now, that what the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case was to the rights of negroes as citizens of the United States, this decision is to the political rights of women in Illinois—annihilation.