It seems quite weird to compare the 18th Century to the 21st. I'm not ready to buy it. Times have changed. Technology has come. Government intervention is more widespread, for better or for worse and hard to tell the difference. Automated trades, automated trade halts, derivatives, news traveling at lightspeed. All give the tools for a crash to be far worse or for one to be prevented with the ultimate outcome depending on far more variables than were around 300 years ago.