Huntsville gazette., 1892-06-04
IN WOMAN'S BEHALF.
WOMEN AND LAW.
A Canadian Opinion on Why They Should
Be Allowed to Enter the Profession.

A Canadian Opinion on Why They Should
Be Allowed to Enter the Profession.
Prejudice dies hard, even in the last
decade of the nineteenth century. Wit
ness the attitude taken by some legal
lights in the Ontario assembly on the
debate on Mr.. Balfour's bill to confer
on the law society power to admit
women to the study of law. What pos
sible reason can there be why women
should not be permitted to study law if
they wish to do so? Is not jurispru-
dence one of the noblest, the most pro-
found, the most broadening and eleyat-
ing of all studies in which the human
mind can engage? By what right,
human or divine, should the masculine
moiety of our citizens take it upon
themselves to say that they must have
a monopoly of the study of this en-
nobling science? The men, pure mind
ed, far-sighted creatures that they are,
are afraid, forsooth, that if women are
permitted to get knowledge of law,
they may wish to enter the courts to
practice it, and in the course of their
practice may some day come in contact
with something so pitchy as to be fit to
be handled only by their compeers of
the other sex. Is not such an argu-
ment as this little too late in the day?
Has it not now been pretty well demon
strated that women may be safely
left to follow the dictates of
their own innate and cultured
sense of propriety, and that they are
quite as we'll qualified to judge what is
modest and becoming for them as are
the average of their mentors of the 9TH
or sex? Is it not, indeed, just as possi-
BILE if that the presence of the ladies at
the bar should have the effect occasion
ally of modifying the character OF the
cross-examinations in certain classes OF
criminal cases, and of preventing the
putting of unnecessary and outrageous
questions, neither justice nor modesty
would suffer from the charge?
But the question is not whether it is
desirabl that women should practice
as barristers in all kinds of cases. 1t is
whether they shall be permitted to
share educational advantages which are
furnished at the public expense, and to
which women therefore contribute their
share of taxation. 1t is also whether
women can be trusted to govern them
selves in accordance with their own
sense of propriety, or whether it is nec-
essary that they should be restricted
and hampered at every term by limita-
tions prescribed by the sex which has
hitherto had monopoly of the law
making business, and which is only
just learning at this late day to use
that monopoly with anything like a just
and reasonable consideration for the
rights of the other sex.
We certainly are not particularly
anxious to see women advocates in the
civil and criminal courts, but we are
anxious that women should be at lib
erty to follow this or any other honor
able business or profession, if they
choose to do so and can find demand
for their services. We confess that we
have never before given much thought
to this particular phase of the question
of woman's sphere, as it has never be-
fore, we believe, been made living
question in Canada. May we be par
doned if we add that the weakness of
the objections raised against Mr.. Bal
four's bill, even more than the cogency
of the reasoning in it's support, have
convinced us of the essential justice of
the measure Toronto Week.