RULE NO. 2.--_Attorneys_: It shall be requisite to the admission of attorneys or counselors to practice in this court, that they shall have been such for three years past in the Supreme Courts of the States to which they respectively belong, and that their private and professional character shall appear to be fair. There is nothing in this rule or in the oath which follows it, either express or implied, which confines the membership of the bar of the United States Supreme Court to the male sex. Had any such term been included therein it would virtually be nullified by the first paragraph of the United States Revised Statutes, ratified by the forty-third congress, June 20, 1875, in which occur the following words: In determining the meaning of the Revised Statutes, or of any act or resolution of congress passed subsequent to February 25, 1871, words importing the singular number may extend and be applied to several persons or things; words importing the masculine gender may be applied to _females_, etc., etc. Now, as to "immemorial usage in England." The executive branch of that government has been vested in an honored and honorable woman for the past forty years. Is it to be supposed if this distinguished lady or any one of her accomplished daughters should ask to be heard at the bar of the Court of the Queen's Bench, the practice of which the United States Supreme Court has set up as its model, that she would be refused? Blackstone recounts that Ann, Countess of Pembroke, held the office of sheriff of Westmoreland and exercised its duties in person. At the assizes at Appleby she sat with the judges on the bench. (See Coke on Lit., p. 326.) The Scotch sheriff is properly a judge, and by the statute 20, Geo., II, c. 43, he must be a lawyer of three years standing. Eleanor, Queen of Henry III. of England, in the year 1253, was appointed lady-keeper of the great seal, or the supreme chancellor of England, and sat in the _Aula Regia_, or King's Court. She in turn appointed Kilkenny, arch-deacon of Coventry, as the sealer of writs and common-law instruments, but the more important matters she executed in person. Queen Elizabeth held the great seal at three several times during her remarkable reign. After the death of Lord-keeper Bacon she presided for two months in the _Aula Regia_.