y and stability to our free
institutions. Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm, who had just returned
from Europe, attended the convention, and spoke on this subject.

Belva A. Lockwood, who had recently been denied admission to the
Supreme Court of the United States, although a lawyer in good
practice for three years in the Supreme Court of the District,
made a very scathing speech, reviewing the decision of the Court.
It may seem to your disfranchised readers quite presumptuous for
one of their number to make those nine wise men on the bench,
constituting the highest judicial authority in the United States,
subjects for ridicule before an audience of the sovereign people;
but, when they learn the decision in Mrs. Lockwood's case, they
will be reassured as to woman's capacity to cope with their
wisdom. "To arrive at the same conclusion, with these judges, it
is not necessary," said Mrs. Lockwood, "to understand
constitutional law, nor the history of English jurisprudence, nor
the inductive or deductive modes of reasoning, as no such
profound learning or processes of thought were involved in that
decision, which was simply this: 'There is no precedent for
admitting a woman to practice in the Supreme Court of the United
States, hence Mrs. Lockwood's application cannot be considered.'"

On this point Mrs. Lockwood showed that it was the glory of each
generation to make its own precedents. As there was none for Eve
in the garden of Eden, she argued there need be none for her
daughters on entering the college, the church, or the courts.
Blackstone--of whose works she inferred the judges were
ignorant--gives several precedents for women in the English
courts. As Mrs. Lockwood--tall, well-proportioned, with dark hair
and eyes, regular features, in velvet dress and train, with
becoming indignation at such injustice--marched up and down the
platform and rounded out her glowing periods, she might have
fairly represented the Italian Portia at the bar of Venice. No
more effective speech was ever made on our platform.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose speeches are always replete with
historical research, reviewed the action of the Republican party
toward woman from the introduction of the word "male" into the
fourteenth amendment of the constitution down to the celebrati