although their parents may marry afterward. Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their plays, make a punning reference to that. It seems to have struck Beaumont and Fletcher as it does us, that it was a cruel law for the Parliament to make; when the church for once was liberal, it was queer that the Parliament should be illiberal; so Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their plays, say: "The children thou shalt get _by this civilian_ cannot inherit by the _law_." This is interesting, because they use all the words I have been trying to define; when they say "the children thou shalt get by this _civilian_," they mean by this civilian a person who is under the civil, or Roman, or church law; that is, they mean to say, although you marry a woman who is a church member and under the jurisdiction of the bishop, etc., nevertheless the church law won't help you; your children by her cannot inherit by the _law_, and the law as used by Beaumont and Fletcher and as used by me and as used in English books means the _common_ law, the common _secular_ law, the law of _England_, not the civil or canon law.[1] Beaumont and Fletcher evidently thought it was a very illiberal statute; and our modern American States have all come to Beaumont and Fletcher's conclusion; they have universally reversed the old English statute and gone back to the church law, so that throughout the United States to-day a child born before the marriage of its parents is legitimate if its parents afterward marry. That is true, no matter how late it is; if the man marries her even on his death-bed, all his children are legitimized. [Footnote 1: "And so all the earls and barons answered with one voice, that they would not change the laws of England."]