On the other hand, we had no less authority than that of the Lord Advocate of Scotland for believing that we were absolutely entitled to what we had so humbly solicited, and that a Court of law would quietly award to us what seemed unattainable by any other means; we had the very widely spread and daily increasing sympathy of the community at large, and received constant offers of help from friends of every kind, who were none the less inclined to befriend us because our opponents stood in high places, and were utterly relentless in their aims and reckless in their means. Under these circumstances, we have done the one thing that remained for us to do, we have brought an action of Declarator against the Senatus of the University;--praying to have it declared that the Senatus is bound, in some way or other, to enable us to complete our education, and to proceed to the medical degree which will entitle us to take place on the Medical Register among the legally qualified practitioners of medicine. By this action it will be decided,--once more to quote our great champion, the _Scotsman_,--whether, indeed, “a University can, with formal solemnity, and with the concurrence of all its component parts, decree the admission of women to study for the profession of medicine, and then deny them access to those means by which alone they can enter that profession; whether, indeed, a University is absolved from all duties towards such of its matriculated students as may have the misfortune to be women. It will have to be decided whether any corporate body can make a contract of which all the obligations are on one side, and can exact fees and demand obedience to regulations, without in its turn incurring any responsibility; and can at pleasure finally send empty away those whose presence is inconvenient, without any regard to the money and time and labour which they have expended in simple reliance upon its good faith.”[111] It is a very great satisfaction to me to find that some of the most illustrious members of the Senatus have expressed their own opinion on these points in the most emphatic way, for they have refused utterly to be parties to the defence of this action, and have entered on the Record a Minute from which I extract the following passage:--