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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
In no department of law is the change more marked than in its application to woman. The common law measured her with the “regulation girdle” of home-maker and home-keeper. She was commanded and compelled to .fill her prescribed limit of obedience and servitude. She was subordinated and coerced, lest she outgrow the standard. Thus saith the old law: “The husband hath by law power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, provided the size of the cane be no larger than his thumb.” The civil law gave to the husband the same or a greater authority over his wife.
What to do with woman has ever been one of the knottiest points of the law. At first, jurists thought to evade the issue by attempting to reduce woman to a ghostly nonentity; but, like Banquo’s ghost, she would not “down” at the command of her Macbeth. Next she was concealed beneath the garb of legal fictions, and under the guise of vested rights smuggled through the departments of the blind goddess.
One link after another in the myriad chains which fettered her freedom and independence has been broken, until she is now not only recognized in legal procedure, but admitted into the very halls of justice, as an officer of the court, and permitted to participate in its proceedings. She-may not only advocate her own rights, but may plead the rights of others. She has left in the rear her former colleagues—infants, idiots and the insane—and almost overtaken her rivals of the fifteenth amendment.
Perhaps you recall some early morn after a night of storm and darkness, how the first gleams of light struggled through scarcely perceptible rifts in the clouds, closing and reopening as the billowy curtains of the night were swayed by the lingering tempest. Anon a roseate hue would tinge the receding clouds, then spread and change until the many colors were blended into clear effulgent light, and the golden sun looked from the dazzling sky. Then the whole stretch of earth became eloquent with voice of man and bird and the hum of industry.
Such has been the breaking of dawn to woman, after her long civil night. The Sapphos and Cornelias, the Esthers and Hortensias, were only fitful gleams amid the surrounding shadows of superstitious customs. From the age of chivalry, which tinged her career with the rosy light of sentiment and love, the changes were rapid. Great rays of light, like Queen Elizabeth, Madame de, Stael, Hannah Moore and Florence Nightingale gleamed above the horizon. The legal fictions and the guardians of her person and property melted away like the mist, and the present century ushered in a day of life and activity for woman in every department of art, science, literature and the professions.
This achievement has not been instantaneous. No “ open sesame ” has miraculously placed within her reach this accumulated wealth of all vocations. No alchemy has transmuted the base elements of ignominy and degradation, to the noblest types of respect and equality. Woman has not obtained a place in the profession by “ demanding her rights,” as Shylock contended for his pound of flesh, but like Portia, by unfolding the harmony and the correllation of legal and equitable claims.
The present century recognizes that the sphere of women is no longer a mooted question. Merit has no sex; and the meritorious lawyer, man or woman, who deserves success, who can both work and wait to win, is sute to achieve both recognition and reward.
Of the three so-called “learned professions” which are necessities of civilization, the legal profession has been perhaps the most reluctant to swing open its portals to admit in fellowship the former “pariahs” of legal procedure: nevertheless these majestic gates have in hundreds of cases responded to the reiterated taps of a woman’s hand. In some states requests for admission to the bar were unheeded, and the dockets are tarnished by the lawsuits which ensued ere the struggle for recognition was ended. Even supreme courts and legislatures have been importuned for opinions and special enactments, that woman might waive the custom of a proxy, and stand in suo jure , in the presence of the ermine. The woman lawyer has ceased to be a novelty. The