compilations of 1835 and 1838, the revision of
1849 and the compilation of 1854, and appears, with a slight
modification, in the revision of 1866. The county courts had now
been abolished, and the power to admit attorneys, as well as to
make rules on the subject, had been given to the Superior Court;
the expression, "such persons," being preserved, and the
provision that "no person" not thus admitted should be allowed to
plead, being omitted.

The statute finally took its present form in the revision of
1875. It retains the provision that the Superior Court may make
rules for the admission of attorneys, and provides that the court
"may admit and cause to be sworn as attorneys such persons as are
qualified therefor agreeably to the rules established," and
restores the provision, dropt in the revision of 1866, that "no
person other than an attorney so admitted shall plead at the bar
of any court in this State, except in his own cause."

These changes, though not such as to affect the meaning of the
statute at any point of importance to the present question, are
yet not wholly without importance. The adoption by the
legislature of the revision of the statutes becomes, both in law
and in fact, a reenactment of the whole body of statutes; and
though in determining the meaning of a statute, we are not to
regard it as then enacted for the first time, especially if there
be no change in its phraseology, yet, where there is such a
change, it follows that the attention of the revisers had been
particularly directed to that statute, as of course also that of
the legislature, and that with the changes made it expresses the
present intent of both. Thus, in this case, it is clear that the
revisers gave particular thought to the phraseology of the
statute we are considering, and put it in a form that seemed to
them best with reference to the present state of things, and
decided to leave the words "such persons" to stand with full
knowledge that they were sufficient to include women, and that
women were already following the profession of law in different
parts of the country. The legislators must be presumed to have
acted with the same consideration and knowledge. It would have
been perfectly easy, if either had thought best, to insert some
words of l