Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/475

 Ch. 16. 3. next to the rights and incapacities which appertain to a batard. The rights are very few, being only uch as he can acquire; for he can inherit nothing, being looked upon as the on of nobody, and ometimes called filius nullius, ometimes filius populi. Yet he may gain a irname by reputation, though he has none by inheritance. All other children have their primary ettlement in their father's parih; but a batard in the parih where born, for he hath no father. However, in cae of fraud, as if a woman be ent either by order of jutices, or comes to beg as a vagrant, to a parih which he does not belong to, and drops her batard there; the batard hall, in the firt cae, be ettled in the parih from whence he was illegally removed ; or, in the latter cae, in the mother's own parih, if the mother be apprehended for her vagrancy. The incapacity of a batard conits principally in this, that he cannot be heir to any one, neither can he have heirs, but of his own body; for, being nullius filius, he is therefore of kin to nobody, and has no ancetor from whom any inheritable blood can be derived. A batard was alo, in trictnes, incapable of holy orders; and, though that were dipened with, yet he was utterly diqualified from holding any dignity in the church : but this doctrine eems now obolete; and in all other repects, there is no ditinction between a batard and another man. And really any other ditinction, but that of not inheriting, which civil policy renders neceary, would, with regard to the innocent offspring of his parents' crimes, be odious, unjut, and cruel to the lat degree: and yet the civil law, o boated of for it's equitable deciions, made batards in ome caes incapable even of a gift from their parents. A batard may, latly, be made legitimate, and capable of inheriting, by the trancendent power of an act of parliament, and not otherwie : as was done in the cae of John of Gant's batard children, by a tatute of Richard the econd. Rh