d the reply which
is annexed. _Ordered_, That the opinion of the Supreme Judicial
Court be requested as to the following questions: _First_--Under
the constitution of this commonwealth, can a woman, if duly
appointed and qualified as a justice of the peace, legally
perform all acts appertaining to that office? _Second_--Under the
laws of this commonwealth, would oaths and acknowledgments of
deeds, taken before a married or unmarried woman duly appointed
and qualified as a justice of the peace, be legal and valid?

OPINION.--By the constitution of the commonwealth, the office of
justice of the peace is a judicial office, and must be exercised
by the officer in person, and a woman, whether married or
unmarried, cannot be appointed to such an office. The law of
Massachusetts at the time of the adoption of the constitution,
the whole frame and purport of the instrument itself, and the
universal understanding and unbroken practical construction for
the greater part of a century afterwards, all support this
conclusion, and are inconsistent with any other. It follows that,
if a woman should be formally appointed and commissioned as a
justice of the peace, she would have no constitutional or legal
authority to exercise any of the functions appertaining to that
office. Each of the questions proposed must, therefore, be
respectfully answered in the negative.

[Signed:] REUBEN A. CHAPMAN, HORACE GRAY, JR.,
JOHN WELLS, JAMES D. COLT,
SETH AMES, MARCUS MORTON.

_Boston_, June 29, 1871.

It is to be remarked that the clause on which the court determined
its judgment was of no practical consequence, since the money
devised had already been paid to Wendell Phillips, who had disposed
of it as the bequest required, and he had given his receipt to the
testator for the amount.

Even the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has begun to
understand the trend of the woman's rights movement, and has
rendered its first favorable decision, in the famous Eddy-will
case. Wendell Phillips told me that he drew up this will, and that
its provisions were so carefully worded, that even the Supreme
Court could find no flaw in it. It is in his own hand-writing, and
Chandler R. Ransom was the executor. Eliza F. Eddy was the daughter
of Francis Jackson, and just befo