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Biography Quote by Mike Jay

“The French revolution, he concluded, had not produced any new principles of truths, merely a mass of examples of how things could go wrong.” quote by Mike Jay — Download Open image

““The French revolution, he concluded, had not produced any new principles of truths, merely a mass of examples of how things could go wrong.””

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More by Mike Jay

“The Air Loom, for all its florid craziness, can be seen to have a function and a rationale: as a miraculous, if temporary, fix…

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“At Bow Street Magistrates' Court the essential facts were established. The man's name was James Tilly Matthews. He was a pauper of the south…

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“It was Matthews, of course, for whom the verdict was the greatest disaster. Not only had he failed to escape from Bedlam, but the…

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“If history is written by the victors, conspiracy theory is typically written by the losers, and there were few greater losers in the revolution…

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“Matthews' shout of treason in the House was no random outburst of lunacy, but the last act in an astonishing adventure: one that might…

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“Up to this point, it was rare for the mad to be distinguished from the poor, the homeless, the indigent, beggars, vagabonds, petty criminals…

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“We think of 1789 as the date of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille as its defining event. Yet as late as halfway through 1792, most of the familiar images of the revolution had yet to occur. Louis XVI was still king, and the Assembly was negotiating a new constitutional arrangement for the monarchy, not so different…

“Many had suspected that the political disasters of the past few years had a hidden cause. The bloodiness of the French mob rule was…

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“To look back before 1800 is to enter another world, one where the number of institutions for the mad was a tiny fraction of…

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“Come the revolution, however, mesmerism was reconceived once more. From its beginnings many had seen it as an aristocratic fad: Mesmer (by this stage…

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“But, mad or sane, Matthews was a man of no ordinary persistence. He was not prepared to renounce the peace plan, any more than…

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“Haslam leaves us in no doubt what we are supposed to make of Matthews' mental world: this is gibberish and nothing more.”

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