BELVA A. LOCKWOOD, _Attorney and Solicitor_.
_Washington, D. C._, March 7, 1878.

Mrs. Lockwood's bill, with Senator Edmond's adverse report, was
reached on the Senate calendar April 22, 1878, and provoked a
spirited discussion. Hon. A. A. Sargent, made a gallant fight in
favor of the bill, introducing the following amendment:

No person shall be excluded from practicing as an attorney
and counselor at law in any court of the United States on
account of sex.

Mr. SARGENT: Mr. President, the best evidence that members of the
legal profession have no jealousy against the admission of women
to the bar who have the proper learning, is shown by this
document which I hold in my hand, signed by one hundred and
fifty-five lawyers of the District of Columbia, embracing the
most eminent men in the ranks of that profession. That there is
no jealousy or consideration of impropriety on the part of the
various States is shown by the fact that the legislatures of many
of the States have recently admitted women to the bar; and my own
State, California, has passed such a law within the last week or
two; Illinois has done the same thing; so have Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri and North Carolina; and Wyoming, Utah and the
District of Columbia among the territories have also done it.
There is no reason in principle why women should not be admitted
to this profession or the profession of medicine, provided they
have the learning to enable them to be useful in those
professions, and useful to themselves. Where is the propriety in
opening our colleges, our higher institutions of learning, or any
institutions of learning, to women, and then when they have
acquired in the race with men the cultivation for higher
employment, to shut them out? There certainly is none. We should
either restrict the laws allowing the liberal education of women,
or, we should allow them to exercise the talents which are
cultivated at the public expense in such departments of
enterprise and knowledge as will be useful to society and will
enable them to gain a living. The tendency is in this direction.
I believe the time has passed to consider it a ridiculous thing
for women to appear upon the lecture platform or in the pulpit,
for women to attend to the treatment of diseases a