The popular idea is, we believe, that by English law
a child born in wedlock is legitimate, unless it can be proved that the husband was away, or in prison, or, in fact, could not possibly have had access to his wife. The decision of the Lords Com- mittee of Privileges in the Aylesford peerage case, which has this week furnished a text for all scandal-lovers, will at last dissipate this impression. Lady Aylesford eloped with Lord Blandford, and although there was no divorce, and although Lord and Lady Aylesford lived afterwards within a few houses of each other, the Law Lords held that the evidence justified the belief that they had never met, and that consequently the child for whom the peerage was claimed was illegitimate. Lord Bramwell went even further, and held that the presumption against a man who was claiming a divorce visiting his wife was so violent as to amount to evidence. The hearing of the case was remarkable for an obiter dictum from Lord Selborne that the rule of law which precludes an illegitimate child from
sharing in money bequeathed by a testator to his " children " was a hard rule. That may be so; but if so, a new Statute of Distri- butions must divide property among legitimate and illegitimate children alike. Is Lord Selborne prepared for that partial legalisation of concubinage ?
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