Mary Hall of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1882, after having completed the prescribed term of study and passed the required examination, applied to the Superior Court in Hartford county for a license to practice law. The statute under which her application was made provided that the Superior Court “may admit as attorneys such persons as are qualified therefor agreeably to the rules established by the judges of said court.” This statute had “come down, with some changes, from the year 1750, and in essentially its present form from the year 1821.” The bar of Hartford county “voted to recommend the admission of the applicant subject to the opinion of the Court whether, as a woman, she could be legally admitted, and appointed Messrs. McManus and Collier to argue the case before the Court.” The Court reserved the application for the advice of the Supreme Court. The latter Court “held, that under the statute a woman could be admitted as an attorney.” This being contra to the holdings of the United States and State courts in similar cases, which we have cited, was refreshing indeed. The opinion merits quotation quite at length. It was delivered by Chief Justice Park. The part selected reads: “No one would doubt that a statute passed, at this time, in the same words would be sufficient to authorize the admission of women to the bar, because it is now a common fact and presumably in the minds of legislators, that women in different parts of the country are and for some time have been following the profession of law. But if we hold that the construction of the statute is to be determined by the admitted fact that its application to women was not in the minds of the legislators when it was passed, where shall we draw the line? All progress in social matters is gradual. We pass almost imperceptibly from a state of public opinion that utterly condemns some course of action to one that strongly approves it. At what point in the history of this change shall we regard a statute, the construction of which is to be affected by it, as passed in contemplation of it? When the statute we are now considering was passed it probably never entered the mind of a single member of the Legislature that black men would ever be seeking for admission under it. Shall we now hold that it cannot apply to black men? We know of no distinction in respect to this rule between the case of a statute and that of a constitutional provision.... Events that gave rise to enactments may always be considered in construing them. This is little more than the familiar rule that in construing a statute we always inquire what particular mischief it was designed to remedy. Thus the Supreme Court of the United States has held that in construing the recent amendments of the Federal Constitution, although they are general in their terms, it is to be considered that they were passed with reference to the exigencies growing out of the emancipation of the