88 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



ments of our social life to be guided mainly by experience and 

 to attempt the untried only with circumspection. 



The great body of our liberties stands in common law. Our 

 special chartei-s have added little or nothing to them. There is 

 little in Declarations or Bills of Rights or constitutions that would 

 not have been law without them. These gi'eat documents that 

 we invest with so much of historic interest were but little more 

 than codifications and reaffirmations of existing liberties. Yet 

 our common law so rich for us in its beneficent privileges is 

 based on the fundamental principle of respect for past experience. 

 Its first motto has been and always will be "stare decisis." 

 Its first principle of philosophy has been that human experi- 

 ence is a safer guide than human speculation. True it has 

 adopted new principles under new exigencies, but never with- 

 out an examination that sifted the elements of the case to the 

 bottom, and subjected the finest comminution to inspection, 

 A man who thinks he has a new principle to engraft on com- 

 mon law may look upon himself as one of the elect of the ages. 

 So thoroughly are our liberties grounded in experience. Yet 

 in a social matter of as much importance to our happiness as 

 anything the common law secures, Mr. Mill advises us to launch 

 out on an " unknown sea " without chart or compass from ex- 

 perience and make what port we may. And there seems some 

 danger that we may follow his wild philosophy. So far the ques- 

 tion of suffrage for woman has had little but superficial treat- 

 ment. The fundamental questions involved have hardly 

 caught the public attention. That there are evils attending the 

 adjustment of the social relations of the sexes we do not deny. 

 That some of these evils may be removed and perhaps all 

 mitigated, we do not deny. But we can hardly expect to rem- 

 edy all at once by an inversion of the foundations on which 

 society has hitherto rested. We shall do better to do as has 

 been done in common law — (and by the doing of which it has 

 earned the name of common sense), look at our specific evil 

 and apply a specific remedy and then stop. The most daring 



