on of
Judge Taney, in the Dred-Scott case, in suppressing the
emancipation of slavery. The day has come when precedents are
made rather than blindly followed. The refusal of the Superior
Court of Philadelphia to allow Carrie S. Burnham to practice law,
because there was no precedent, was a weak evasion of common law
and common sense. One hundred years ago there was no precedent
for a man practicing law in the State of Pennsylvania, and yet we
have not learned that there was any difficulty in establishing a
precedent. I do not now remember any precedent for the
Declaration of Independence of the United Colonies, and yet
during a century it has not been overturned. The rebellion of the
South had no precedent, and yet, if I remember, there was an
issue joined, and the United States found that she had
jurisdiction of the case.

The admission of women to Cornell University; their reception on
equal footing in Syracuse University, receiving in both equal
honorary degrees; the establishment of Wellesley College, with
full professorships and capable women to fill them; the agitation
of the question in Washington of the establishment of a
university for women, all show a mental awakening in the popular
mind not hitherto known. A new era is opening in the history of
the world. The seed sown twenty-five years ago by Mrs. Stanton
and other brave women is bearing fruit.

SARA ANDREWS SPENCER said it was interesting to pair off the
objections and let them answer each other like paradoxes. Women
will be influenced by their husbands and will vote for bad men to
please them. Women have too much influence now, and if we give
them any more latitude they will make men all vote their way.
Owing to the composition and structure of the female brain, women
are incapable of understanding political affairs. If women are
allowed to vote they will crowd all the men out of office, and
men will be obliged to stay at home and take care of the
children. That is, owing to the composition and structure of the
female brain, women are so exactly adapted to political affairs
that men wouldn't stand any chance if women were allowed to enter
into competition with them. Women don't want it. Women shouldn't
have it, for they don't know how to use it. Grace Greenwood (who