Mr.Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children; and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy." "A cruel law, Mr.Pendril--a cruel law in a Christian country." "Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking peculiarity in this case.

I am far from defending the law of England as it affects illegitimate offspring.

On the contrary, I think it a disgrace to the nation.

It visits the sins of the parents on the children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage; and it claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality and religion.

But it has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in the case of these unhappy girls.