participating in the offices of State and the administration of
public affairs shall have been recognized by the law-making
department of the Government--that department to which the
initiative in great measures of reform properly belongs. For us
to attempt, in a matter of this importance, to inaugurate a
practice at variance 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 publi