Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-08-30
4 Correspondent Corrects.

To the Editor of the Globe:
In your issue of this morning find the fol-
lowing unjust, illiberal, and unchivalrous
Item, evidently clipped hap-hazard from some
other newspaper:
Rev. Frank Besant, husband of the somewhat no.
tor1ous Annie Besant the Malthusan, has obtained
an order from the master of the rolls restraining
that lady from annoying him by letter or otherwise
OF lnsttutlng any proceeding to compel him to live
with her. The order is temporary, and the cues
uon OF making it permanent is to come before the
court.
Annie Besant and Rev. Frank Besaet were
formerly husband and wife before the Iaw-the
Puck OF youthful fancy delighting at times to
mate the leopardess with the jackal. Two
children, boy and girl, were born to this
strangely mismated pair After five or six
years cohabitation the spell of the malicious
Ia 1alry was broken. and they agreed to separate
The English laws are more strict than
American, hence it could be only
a legal superintendent divorce. The
signed and sealed agreement between this
couple was: He to take the boy, she the girl /;
each to be permitted to visit the child of the
other as inclination prompted. In considera-
ton OF being permitted to retain her daughter
undlsturbed, Mrs. B. gave her lord written
agreement never to call upon him for a cent for
her support or that of her daughter.
The years went on. Mrs. Besant became a
free-thought writer of note; finally like
Harriet Martineau, and hundreds of other noble
men and women, finding intellectual rest from
religious warfare in atheism. Loving her race
with warm hdellty, she became reformer one
of the class pointed at by our American poet
when he wrote the ringing lines:
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
But that scaffold sways the future,
And beyond the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own
My time is too precious and your space too
limited to tell the whole story. Mrs. Besant,
following the line of her honest convictions,
became a Notwithstanding is one who believes
that the corrective for over-population is scien-
tltlc prevention of birth instead of disease,
war, pestilence and famine. Her husband vio-
lated his written agreement came
before judge and demanded the
possession of her daughter. on the
simple, bare, theological ground of the moth
er's Atheism. recreant Jewish Judge, named
Sir George Jessel. forgetting the religious per-
secutlons of his own race-gave verdict against
the mother simply, and solely, on the ground
of her Atheism. An appeal has been taken,
and a test question will so before the highest
British tribunal. Mrs. Besant, the LIST of Au-
with rheumatic fever, her disease heightened
and intensified by the loss of her little one,
torn from mother's arms because that mother
was true to herself.
:. One word as to the paragraph quoted. Mrs.
Besant as notorious as being one Of the purest,
truest and best women of her age, and intellec-
tually the peer of Miss Martineau or Marian
Evans She is the Madame Roland
of to-day's progress. AS to her
lnstltuting proceedings to compel her clerical
js ckal to live with her, it is simply ludicrous,
When the spell was removed from Titanna' eyes