Conducting the vital fluid: the politics and poetics of mesmerism in the 1790s. From: Studies in Romanticism | Date: March 22, 2004| Author: Fulford, Tim | COPYRIGHT 2004 Boston University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

BY DECEMBER 1795 PRIME MINISTER WILLIAM PITT WAS WELL ON THE way to crushing political dissent in Britain. He had tried reformers for treason, passed laws restricting the right of association and suspended habeas corpus, all without an outcry from British people about their loss of freedom. To one radical, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the people's quietude was an uncanny sign of a new malaise coursing through the body politic:

   WILLIAM PITT, the great political Animal Magn...