the statute law of Illinois, or the common law
prevailing in that State, can no longer be set up as a barrier
against the right of females to pursue any lawful employment for
a livelihood (the practice of law included), assumes that it is
one of the privileges and immunities of women as citizens to
engage in any and every profession, occupation, or employment in
civil life.

It certainly can not be affirmed, as a historical fact, that this
has ever been established as one of the fundamental privileges
and immunities of the sex. On the contrary, the civil law, as
well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference
in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is,
or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and
proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex
evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.
The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in
the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things,
indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to
the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say
identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong,
to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman
adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her
husband. So firmly fixed was this sentiment in the founders of
the common law that it became a maxim of that system of
jurisprudence that a woman had no legal existence separate from
her husband, who was regarded as her head and representative in
the social state; and, notwithstanding some recent modifications
of this civil status, many of the special rules of law flowing
from and dependent upon this cardinal principle still exist in
full force in most States. One of these is, that a married woman
is incapable, without her husband's consent, of making contracts
which shall be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was
one circumstance which the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed
important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to
perform the duties and trusts that belong to the office of an
attorney and counselor.

It is true that many women are unmarried and not affected by any
of the duties, complications, and incapacities aris