in that court is an exception to the nearly uniform
policy of the States of the Union. Would it be tolerated if the
Supreme Court undertook by rule to establish any other
disqualification, any of those disqualifications which have
existed in regard to holding any other office in the country?
Suppose the court were of the opinion we had been too fast in
relieving persons who took part in the late rebellion from their
disabilities, and that it would not admit persons who had so
taken part to practice before the Supreme Court; is there any
doubt that congress would at once interfere? Suppose the Supreme
Court were of opinion that the people of the United States had
erred in the amendment which had removed the disqualification
from colored persons and declined to admit such persons to
practice in that court; is there any doubt that congress would
interfere and would deem it a fit occasion for the exercise of
the law-making power?

Now, Mr. President, this bill is not a bill merely to admit women
to the privilege of engaging in a particular profession; it is a
bill to secure to the citizen of the United States the right to
select his counsel, and that is all. At present a case is tried
and decided in the State courts of any State of this Union which
may be removed to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the
courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as
advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose
direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the
court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended
the case from its commencement to its successful termination in
the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend
upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is
transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? Everybody
knows, at least every lawyer of experience knows, the
impossibility of transferring with justice to the interests of a
client, a cause from one counsel to another. A suit is instituted
under the advice of a counsel on a certain theory, a certain
remedy is selected, a certain theory of the cause is the one on
which it is staked. Now that must be attended to and defended by
the counsel under whose advice the suit has taken its shape; the
pleadings have b