registered, to be laid before parliament. Guardians of every union, parish, or place under the Poor Law Amendment Act, are within given times to divide their union or parish into districts, and to appoint to each some person, with such qualifications as the registrar-general may by rule declare necessary, to be a registrar of births and deaths and each district to have a distinct name. The clerk to the guardians, if he think fit, and have the qualifications necessary, may assume the office of superintendent-registrar: otherwise, the guardians may appoint to the office. Every registrar and superintendent is to hold office during the pleasure of the registrargeneral. Any officer of a union or parish, holding office under this act, to cease to do so on removal from his former office. Guardians to provide out of the poor rates a register office, to be under the care of the superintendent. Registrar-general to furnish to the superintendent, for the registrars under him, strong iron boxes, with locks and two keys, for the safe custody of register-books and documents, which on removal from office, are to be given up to his successor, under pain of imprisonment by summary process before justices. Registrar and deputy must dwell within their district, with their names and additions on their houses.

On the part of the community, the acts required to be done under the statute are the following:

The father or mother, or the occupier of any house or tenement in which a child is born, must give notice of such birth to the registrar of the district in which it happens, within forty-two days next after the day of birth; and the father or mother or (in case of their death, illness, absence, or inability) the occupier must, within forty-two days, give information to the registrar, on being requested to do so, of the following particulars, namely:-the day of the birth of the child; the name (if any is given); the sex; the name and surname of the father; the name and maiden surname of the mother; the rank, profession, trade, or calling of the father: the person giving such information must also state and put in the register his or her name, description, and residence; and unless this be done, no register can be given in evidence. No fee or payment can be lawfully required of the person so giving information respecting any birth and the entry in the register, which the registrar will be obliged to make, being signed as aforesaid, will be evidence of such birth in any court of law or equity.

No birth may be registered after forty-two days from the time of such birth, unless the father or guardian of the child, or some person present at the birth, make a solemn declaration of the foregoing particulars, and the registrar shall register the birth accordingly, in the presence of the superintendent-registrar; and the person requiring the birth to be so registered pay to the superintendent-registrar 2s. 6d., and to the registrar (unless the delay shall have been occasioned by his default) 58.

No person shall knowingly cause any birth to be registered other

wise than as mentioned, after forty-two days, under a penalty of £50; and no person shall knowingly cause any birth to be registered at all after six calendar months from the day of birth (except in the case of children born at sea), under the like penalty.

No register of births made after six calendar months from the day of birth (except in the case of children born at sea) will be received as legal evidence in any court of law or equity.

In all cases of DEATH the following is requisite :

Some person present at a death, or in attendance during the last illness, or (in case of the inability of such person) the occupier, or (if the occupier be the person who has died) some inmate of the house or tenement in which a death shall have happened, must, within five days after the death, give notice to the registrar of the district, and must within eight days give information to the said registrar, on being requested to do so, according to the best of his or her knowledge or belief, of the following particulars, namely:the day of death; the name and surname of the person who has died; the sex; the age; the rank, profession, trade, or calling; the cause of death: the person giving information must also state and sign in the register his or her name, description, and residence; and unless this be done, no register can be given in evidence. No fee or payment can be lawfully required of the person so giving information respecting any death; and the entry in the register, which the registrar will thereupon be obliged to make, being signed as aforesaid, will be evidence of such death in any court of law or equity.

Every person who shall bury, or perform any funeral or any religious service for the burial of any dead body, for which no certificate shall have been made and delivered either by the registrar or (in cases of inquests) by the coroner, and who shall not within seven days give notice thereof to the registrar, will forfeit £10. And no certificate can be given (except by the coroner when an inquest has been held) unless the death has been registered by the registrar of the district. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that persons directed as above shall, without delay, give information respecting a death to the registrar of the district within which the death has taken place, that he may register the same, and thereupon deliver a certificate to the undertaker, or other person having charge of the funeral.

CAUTIONS.-Every person wilfully making or causing to be made any false statement touching any of the particulars required to be known and registered, for the purpose of such statement being inserted in any register of birth, death, or marriage, will be subject to the same pains and penalties as if guilty of perjury.

Persons failing to do that which is by an act of parliament enjoined, are indictable for a misdemeanor, although no specific penalty is imposed by the act which they have so disobeyed.

CHAPTER XI.

Parent and Child.

CHILDREN are either legitimate or bastards, and, according as they fall under the one or the other description, are subject to different legal qualifications.

A legitimate child is one born in lawful wedlock, or within a competent time after a lawful marriage.

Independent of the obligations imposed by nature, parents are compelled by law to provide a maintenance for their offspring. By the 43 Eliz. c. 2, the father and mother, the grandfather and grandmother, of poor children, unable to work, either through infancy, disease, or accident, are bound to provide them with necessaries, at the rate of 208. a month, or £13 a year.

The father alone has legal power over his children, and this power he may exercise till they attain 21 years of age. He is entitled to the custody and care of his children, and may retake them if taken from his custody; and the courts will grant a habeas corpus to restore them, as well as entertain actions of trespass brought by him against parties taking them away. He has the right to direct the education of his children, and, being under age, may correct them in a reasonable manner, and delegate that authority to a schoolmaster or tutor, who must exercise his delegated power, not in an angry, but considerate and temperate manner. But though the father, not the mother, has the legal custody of children, by 2 & 3 V. c. 54, the lord chancellor, or master of the rolls, may, on petition of the mother, make an order for her access to her children, and, if such children be within the age of seven years, for the delivery of them to the mother until they attain that age, subject to such regulations as the judge may deem just and convenient. But no mother against whom adultery has been established in a court of law can have access to, or the custody of, her children.

Courts of equity exercise a power of restraint upon parents in matters tending to the detriment of children who have property within their jurisdiction; and the lord chancellor has interfered to withhold the custody and education of his children from the father, whose conduct, as by living openly in adultery, has been grossly immoral, Wellesley v. Duke of Beaufort, 2 Russ. 1. The jurisdiction of the court, Lord Eldon said, in this case, was undoubted, and he had no hesitation in exercising it, where there was any property for the maintenance of children; but not otherwise.

By 5 G. 4, c. 83, persons being able, but wilfully neglecting, by work, to support their families, whereby they become chargeable to

the parish, shall be deemed idle and disorderly persons, punishable by imprisonment and hard labour, not exceeding a month; and every person running away and leaving his wife or child chargeable, shall be deemed a rogue and a vagabond.

Also, by 5 G. 1, c. 8, if a parent run away and leave his children, the churchwardens and overseers of the parish may seize his rents, goods, and chattels, and dispose of them towards their relief.

The 59 G. 3, c. 12, provides for the application of the allowance of Greenwich pensioners, the wages of seamen, and other persons in public employments who abscond from their families.

The laws impose certain duties on children towards their parents. A child is justifiable in defending the person and maintaining the cause of a parent; and, by the 43rd of Elizabeth, is compellable, if of sufficient ability, to provide for his support, and this he must do for an unworthy progenitor as for one who has shown the greatest tenderness in the discharge of his parental duties; but the obligation extends only to relations by blood, not by marriage; so that a husband is not bound, even while his wife is alive, to support her parents.

II. BASTARDS.

A bastard is not only one who is begotten, but born, out of lawful matrimony; or is born so long after the death of the husband, that, by the usual course of gestation, he could not be begotten by him.

But, in the first place, if the child be begotten while the parents are single, and they marry a few months after, the child is not a bastard, though begotten out of wedlock; for the child is legitimated by the recognition of the husband, 8 East. 93. And, in the second, though the usual course of gestation is nine calendar months, the law is not particular; and if the child be born within some days of that time, it is counted legitimate.

The legitimacy or illegitimacy of the child of a married woman, living in a notorious state of adultery, is a question for a jury to determine. But, in general, during coverture, the children are accounted legitimate, unless the absence of the husband beyond the seas, or some other circumstance, renders it physically impossible that the husband should have had such intercourse with his wife as to be the father of the child. In the Say and Sele Peerage, 1 Cl. & Fin. 507, where children were born whilst the wife was living in adultery, and the husband residing in another part of the kingdom, rendering access impossible, it was held that the illegitimacy was established. On the other hand, access of the husband is not conclusive of legitimacy; and in the Banbury case, though access was notorious, yet the House of Lords decided that the concealment of the birth of a child from the husband's knowledge was sufficient to prove an adulterous issue.

If the wife have children after separation by divorce, they are bastards; but in a voluntary separation, by agreement, the law supposes access, unless the negative be established.

The father of an infant legitimate child is entitled, as stated in the last section, to the custody of it, but the mother of an illegitimate child is preferred to the putative father; and if the putative father of a bastard obtain possession of it by fraud, the court will order it to be restored on the application of the mother, Rex v. Sope, 5 T. R. 278.

If a person know that his natural child is boarded and clothed by another, and neither expresses dissent nor takes the child away, he is liable for such board and clothing without any promise so to do, Nicholl v. Allen, 3 C. & P. 36.

A bastard has no rights but what he can acquire; being, in the eye of the law, the son of nobody, he cannot be heir to any one, nor have heirs but of his own body. He has, legally, no name, except that he gains by reputation. But he may be made legitimate by

act of parliament.

Child, in an act of parliament, means a legitimate child only, not a bastard.-Court of Exchequer, Nov. 6, 1863.

CHAPTER XII.

Guardians and Infants.

A GUARDIAN is a temporary parent of a child for so long a time as the ward is an infant, or under age.

If an estate be left to an infant, the father is by common law the guardian, and must account to his child for the profits.

A father may, by deed or will, dispose of the custody of his child, either born or unborn, till such child attain the age of 21 years. These are called guardians by statute, or testamentary guardians.

As to persons considered within age, the period is different between males and females. A male 12 years old may take the oath of allegiance; at 14, is at years of discretion, and may consent or not to marriage; and if his discretion be actually proved, may dispose, by will, of his personal estate; at 17, he may be an executor; and at 21, is at his own disposal, and may alienate his lands, goods, and chattels. A female at 7 years of age may be betrothed or given in marriage; at 9, is entitled to dower; at 12, is at years of maturity, and may consent or not to marriage; at 17 may be executrix; and at 21 may dispose of herself and lands.

So that full age, in male or female, is 21 years, which day is completed on the day preceding the anniversary of a person's birth. The power and reciprocal duties of guardian and ward are the