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ALEXANDER WHISTELO. - 581

only one month from the time she swears to his having got
her with child.) All the physicians agrea that that symptom
of prognancy docs not take place in less than three mozths,
and that it is more commonly four. She has also positively
contradicted npon one examination upon oath, what she posi-
tively swore upon another. At the police office she said she
hed no connection with the white man—before this Court
she has acknowledged that she had.

‘There is at least as much reason to charge the white man
to be the father, with whom she states on her oath that she
had a connection within a few days after the first connection
with the black. So short an interval must leave it impossible
to determine, from the reckoning of time merely, which was
the father. If so, and the matter was otherwise in balance,
surely the child being white, is a circumstance strong enough
to put it past all doubt. Another fact equally conclusive is
what the mother told the witness, Ray, when she took back
the child, ‘That the defendant at firat would not own it, that
it was not his, and that now he should not have it.’”? Now, if
this was a serious crime and a criminal prosecution, such evi-
dence would not weigh a feather. I cannot see why there
should be any more hesitation in the present case.

Mr. Vanhook said the arguments did not convince him in
any degree that the black man was not the father of the
child. And if by fair reasoning, the party svho sued was en-
titled to an order, the Court would, in spite of subtle objec-
tions and raillery, grant it in furtherance of the statute. The
Commissioners of the Almshouse had instituted this anit as
their duty obliged them, and the law directed. The women's
testimony in one view was meritorious—it went to discharge
the community from the burden of supporting a bastard
child, and to oblige the true father to maintain it, and there.
fore should not he disfavored.

Much stress waz Jaid upon the time of her feeling her
pregnancy, but that was not sufficient to destroy the force of
her positive testimony on oath; a difference or mistake of a
month or two, which may be the fault of her memory, is not

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