Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/474

 458 2. us next ee the duty of parents to their batard children, by our law; which is principally that of maintenance. For, though batards are not looked upon as children to any civil purpoes, yet the ties of nature, of which maintenance is one, are not o eaily diolved: and they hold indeed as to many other intentions; as, particularly, that a man hall not marry his batard iter or daughter. The civil law therefore, when it denied maintenance to batards begotten under certain atrocious circumtances, was neither cononant to nature, nor reaon; however profligate and wicked the parents might jutly be eteemed.

method in which the Englih law provides maintenance for them is as follows. When a woman is delivered, or declares herelf with child, of a batard, and will by oath before a jutice of peace charge any peron having got her with child, the jutice hall caue uch peron to be apprehended, and commit him till he gives ecurity, either to maintain the child, or appear at the next quarter eions to dipute and try the fact. But if the woman dies, or is married before delivery, or micarries, or proves not to have been with child, the peron hall be dicharged: otherwie the eions, or two jutices out of eions, upon original application to them, may take order for the keeping of the batard, by charging the mother or the reputed father with the payment of money or other utentation for that purpoe. And if uch putative father, or lewd mother, run away from the parih, the overeers by direction of two jutices may eize their rents, goods, and chattels, in order to bring up the aid batard child. Yet uch is the humanity of our laws, that no woman can be compulively quetioned concerning the father of her child, till one month after her delivery: which indulgence is however very frequently a hardhip upon parihes, by uffering the parents to ecape. Rh