capitalism

Cato’s Letters 55
Independent Whig, which dealt with the dangers posed to
English liberty by Jacobites and papists and argued in ringing
terms that the individual conscience had precedence
over ecclesiastical authority. This theme was again taken up
in several of Cato’s letters, in which the authors maintained
that our religious convictions were subject only to God himself
and were immune from all governmental jurisdiction.
Indeed, they held, freedom of conscience was the first of our
natural rights. In an age of Jacobite plots and conspiracies
following the Revolutionary Settlement of 1688, Trenchard
and Gordon’s Low Church sympathies were an integral element
of radical Whig doctrine, when Popery was seen as an
instrument for restoring Stuart despotism.
Gordon had originally met Trenchard at a London coffee
house in 1719, when Trenchard, who was far older than
Gordon, had already obtained a reputation as a defender of
radical Whig views. Trenchard, who was extremely wealthy,
was impressed with the style and wit that Gordon had displayed
in several recently published essays attacking the
pretensions of the clergy, and he offered to hire the younger
man as his secretary. This relationship quickly led to their
collaboration, first on The Independent Whig and then on
Cato’s Letters. Trenchard died in 1723 while Gordon survived
for another 27 years, having soon after Trenchard’s
death abandoned his political beliefs in return for a substantial
bribe from Prime Minister Walpole. He died rich and
corpulent, having married Trenchard’s widow, and he
devoted his remaining days to a translation and commentary
on Sallust and Tacitus.
The letters bear the unmistakable stamp of John Locke’s
political philosophy and constitute a vigorous libertarian
defense of limited government and individual freedom.
Natural law and natural rights play a critical role in the
structure of Cato’s argument respecting the nature of political
society and the limits of political authority. The authors
maintained that man is possessed of inalienable rights and
that the liberty to which all Englishmen are entitled is theirs
not solely by virtue of the historical development of
English law and custom, but a product of man’s nature. “All
Men are born free,” Cato writes. “Liberty is a Gift from
God himself, nor can they alienate the same by Consent,
though possibly they may forfeit it by Crimes.” The authority
of the civil magistrate rests on no foundation other than
consent and derives from our inherent right to defend ourselves
against those who seek to trespass against our lives,
liberty, or property. It is this function alone that circumscribes
legitimate political authority. Our liberty, which
government is obligated to protect, consists in the right we
have over our actions and over all our property of whatever
sort and is limited only in that we are precluded from
infringing on a similar right in others. The idea that the
laws of nature and the contract by which civil society is
established constrain the sovereign to safeguarding the
lives and estates of his subjects, is the central legacy of
Lockean theory and pervades 18th-century radical Whig
thought in general and the views reflected in Cato’s Letters
in particular.
The letters proved immensely popular, not only when
they originally appeared, but throughout the 18th century.
Of the more than 40 weeklies published in England in the
1720s, the London Journal’s circulation soon surpassed all
its competitors in influence and importance as a consequence
of Cato’s contributions. They were so well received
that even while new letters were appearing, groups of earlier
letters were published in collected form by several London
presses. In addition, the whole collection appeared in six
separate editions by 1755. The letters appear to have been as
well received in the colonies as in Britain. Selected letters
were republished in the American press, and American
newspapers frequently quoted from them. In 1722, even
while the letters were still appearing in London, the
Philadelphia American Weekly Mercury began reprinting
them in defense of the rights of free men. They were so
highly thought of in the colonies that, during their struggles
with the Crown, they were constantly invoked in response to
the whole range of depredations under which the colonists
suffered. Freedom of speech and conscience, the rights possessed
by Englishmen both by virtue of their traditional laws
and by their nature as human beings, the benefits of freedom,
the nature of tyranny, and, above all, the right of men
to resist tyranny, all found an eager reception in the colonies.
Indeed, as the American historian Clinton Rossiter has
noted, Cato’s Letters were “the most popular, quotable,
esteemed source of political ideas in the colonial period.”
They continue to constitute one of the most eloquent disquisitions
against despotism written in the English language.
See also Corruption; Liberalism, Classical; Locke, John;
Republicanism, Classical; Sidney, Algernon; Whiggism
Further Readings
Carswell, John. The South Sea Bubble. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1960.
Dickinson, H. T. Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in
Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson,
1977.
Dickson, P. G. M. The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in
the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756. London:
Macmillan, 1967.
Jones, D. W. War and Economy in the Age of William III and
Marlborough. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
Speck, W. A. Stability and Strife: England, 1714–1760. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Trenchard, John, and Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters. Ronald
Hamowy, ed. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1720–1723.
Williams, Basil. The Whig Supremacy, 1714–1760. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1939.
RH