Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/470

 454 Athenian laws carried this principle into practice with a crupulous kind of nicety: obliging all children to provide for their father, when fallen into poverty; with an exception to purious children, to thoe whoe chatity had been protituted by conent of the father, and to thoe whom he had not put in any way of gaining a livelihood. The legilature, ays baron Montequieu, conidered, that in the firt cae the father, being uncertain, had rendered the natural obligation precarious; that, in the econd cae, he had ullied the life he had given, and done his children the greatet of injuries, in depriving them of their reputation; and that, in the third cae, he had rendered their life (o far as in him lay) an inupportable burthen, by furnihing them with no means of ubitence.

laws agree with thoe of Athens with regard to the firt only of thee particulars, the cae of purious iue. In the other caes the law does not hold the tie of nature to be diolved by any mibehaviour of the parent; and therefore a child is equally jutifiable in defending the peron, or maintaining the caue or uit, of a bad parent, as a good one; and is equally compellable, if of ufficient ability, to maintain and provide for a wicked and unnatural progenitor, as for one who has hewn the greatet tendernes and parental piety.

II. are next to conider the cae of illegitimate children, or batards; with regard to whom let us inquire, 1. Who are batards. 2. The legal duties of the parents towards a batard child. 3. The rights and incapacities attending uch batard children.

1. are batards. A batard, by our Englih laws, is one that is not only begotten, but born, out of lawful matrimony. The civil and canon laws do not allow a child to remain a batard, if the parents afterwards intermarry : and herein they differ mot materially from our law; which, though not o trict as to re- Rh