TRUTHS “UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED” OR “THOROUGHLY ESTABLISHED”.

TRUTHS “UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED” OR “THOROUGHLY ESTABLISHED”. Abigail Adams wrote a letter to John on March 31, 1776 which implored John to be “more generous and favorable to [ladies] than your ancestors”. In the same passage she says: “…That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute….” (quoted in a review by Mark G. Spencer of ABIGAIL AND JOHN ADAMS by G.J. Barker-Benfield in the August 5 Times Literary Supplement). I was reminded of a similar sentence from 1813: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” The grand declaratory sentence must have been part of the tool kit for writers during the period from 1775 to 1815. And so, evidently, was the use of it for a variety of shades of tone and ironic comment.