of the act,
it is provided that no person shall be entitled to receive a
license until he shall have obtained a certificate, from the
court of some county, of his good moral character, and this is
the only express limitation upon the exercise of the power thus
intrusted to this court. In all other respects it is left to our
discretion to establish the rules by which admission to this
office shall be determined. But this discretion is not an
arbitrary one, and must be held subject to at least two
limitations. One is, that the court should establish such terms
of admission as will promote the proper administration of
justice; the second, that it should not admit any persons or
class of persons who are not intended by the Legislature to be
admitted, even though their exclusion is not expressly required
by the statute.

The substance of the last limitation is simply that this
important trust reposed in us should be exercised in conformity
with the designs of the power creating it.

Whether, in the existing social relations between men and women,
it would promote the proper administration of justice, and the
general well-being of society, to permit women to engage in the
trial of cases at the bar, is a question opening a wide field of
discussion upon which it is not necessary for us to enter. It is
sufficient to say that, in our opinion, the other implied
limitation upon our power, to which we have above referred, must
operate to prevent our admitting women to the office of
attorney-at-law. If we were to admit them, we should be
exercising the authority conferred upon us in a manner which, we
are fully satisfied, was never contemplated by the Legislature.

Upon this question it seems to us neither this applicant herself,
nor any unprejudiced and intelligent person, can entertain the
slightest doubt. It is to be remembered that at the time this
statute was enacted we had, by express provision, adopted the
common law of England; and, with three exceptions, the statutes
of that country passed prior to the fourth year of James the
First, so far as they were applicable to our condition.

It is to be also remembered that female attorneys-at-law were
unknown in England, and a proposition that a woman should enter
the courts of Westminster