The entrance of woman upon the legal profession raised constitutional questions as to the enactment of law; and so here, as in the matter of the school suffrage, we see how carefully republicanism guarded the post at which must stand the sentinels of liberty. If it might involve law- enforcement, woman could not practise law or vote on the school question; but the Supreme Court of the United States decided that "the practising of any profession violates no law of the Federal Constitution."
The study of law must prove of great benefit to woman, though here again it has already been shown that it is possible that the greatest practical advantage she will derive from entrance into this noble profession will be from acquiring knowledge of her country's laws, and how to take care of her own property. Widows and unmarried women have almost invariably placed their moneyed interests in the hands of a man, when it would have been better for all concerned that they should have spent some patient thought on the details of their own affairs. The first woman who was admitted to the bar in this State (New York) was a teacher in the Albany Normal College, and she still remains there, and the women's classes for legal study in New York City have been largely composed of those who had no intention of claiming admittance to the bar. That women can and do enter all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus enhance the feeling of pride in their sex, which is a strong impulse with women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society.
The seventh count in the Suffrage indictment declared: "He has denied her facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her."
Among the resolutions passed in the first Suffrage convention was one demanding: "Equal rights in the universities," and the first petition presented by Suffrage advocates contained a clause asking that entrance to men's colleges be obtained for women by legal enactment. We note that this is far from being a demand for education for women equal to that given to men in the universities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and women have worked together in securing for woman every facility and opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier of sex" is not broken down in education. But few of the older colleges for men admit women, and those few, so far as I have learned from conversation with members of their faculties, speak of the arrangement as an experiment, and give the need for economy, combined with a desire to assist women, as a reason for making that experiment. Meantime the knocking at men's literary portals by Suffrage advocates has gone on as vigorously as if women could obtain education in no other way.