services as an
attorney are just as much her earnings as the dollar that a
sewing-woman receives for her day's work, and are just as much
protected by the Act of 1869. Is it for the court to say, in
advance, that it will not admit a married woman? Should she be
admitted, and fail to perform her duty, or to comply with all her
contracts as an attorney, could not the court, upon application,
strike her name from the roll, or inflict more summary
punishment?

Your petitioner has complied with all the provisions of the
statutes of the State regulating the admission of attorneys, and
asks, as a matter of right and justice, standing as she does upon
the law of the land, that she be admitted.

Not a line of written law, or a single decision in our State, can
be found disqualifying a married woman from acting as an
attorney. This honorable court can send me from its bar, and
prevent me from practicing as an attorney, and it is of small
consequence; but if, in so doing, your honors say to me: "You can
not receive a license to practice as an attorney-at-law in the
courts of this State upon the ground that you would not be bound
by the obligations necessary to be assumed, where the relation of
attorney and client shall exist, by reason of the disability
imposed by your married condition"; you, in my judgment, in
striking me down, strike a blow at the rights of every married
woman in the great State of Illinois who is dependent on her
labor for support, and say to her, you can not enter into the
smallest contract in relation to your earnings or separate
property, that can be enforced against you in a court of law.

This result can, in my opinion, only be reached by disregarding
the liberal statutes of our State, passed for the sole purpose of
extending the rights of married women, and forever removing from
our law, relating to their power to contract in regard to their
earnings and property, the fossil foot-prints of the feudal
system, and following the strictest rules of the common law.

Lord Mansfield, notwithstanding the fact that slaves had been
held, bought and sold for years in the streets of London,
declared that the moment a slave touched British soil his
shackles fell. The same noble lord held that a married woman
might under certa