A single woman can act as executrix under a will, but a wife cannot accept an executorship without her husband’s consent. [Sidenote: Administratrix.] A woman is capable of holding the office of administratrix to an intestate personalty, and administration will be granted to her if she be next of kin to the intestate. But a wife cannot act without the consent of her husband. If a man place a woman in his house, and treat her as his wife, he is responsible for her debts to the same extent as if they were actually married. LAWS CONCERNING ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN AND THEIR MOTHERS. [Sidenote: Maintenance.] A single woman having a child may throw the maintenance upon the putative father, so called to distinguish him from a husband, until the age of thirteen. The law only enforces the parents to maintain such child, and the sum the father is obliged to pay, after an order of affiliation is proved against him, never exceeds two shillings and sixpence a week. The mother, as long as she is unmarried or a widow, is bound to maintain such child as a part of her family until such child attain the age of sixteen. A man marrying a woman having a child or children at the time of such marriage, is bound to support them, whether legitimate or not, until the age of sixteen. [Sidenote: Disabilities of a natural child.] The rights of an illegitimate child are only such as he can acquire; he can inherit nothing, being in law looked upon as nobody’s son, but he may acquire property by devise or bequest. He may acquire a surname by reputation, but does not inherit one. The only incapacity under which he labours is that he cannot be heir-at-law or next of kin to any person, nor can he have any heirs except lineal descendants; if he acquire property and die without a will, such property will go to the crown unless he leave a lineal descendant. FOOTNOTES: [1] Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., received her diploma in America before she walked St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. [2] 6th and 7th of William IV. chap. 85. REMARKS. These are the principal laws concerning women. It is not now as it once was, when all existing institutions were considered sacred and unalterable; and the spirit which made Blackstone an admirer of, rather than a critic on, every law because it was _law_, is exchanged for a bolder and more discriminating spirit, which seeks to judge calmly what is good and to amend what is bad. Philosophical thinkers have generally come to the conclusion that the tendency of progress is gradually to dispense with law--that is to say, as each individual man becomes unto himself a law, less external restraint is necessary. And certainly the most urgently needed reforms are simple erasures from the statute book. Women, more than any other members of the community, suffer from over legislation.