Cato's Letters

Cato's Letters were essays by British writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, first published from 1720 to 1723 under the pseudonym of Cato (95–46 BC), the implacable foe of Julius Caesar and a famously stalwart champion of Roman traditionalism (mos maiorum).

For other uses, see Cato's Letters (disambiguation).

Purpose

The Letters were written in response to the South Sea Bubble^[1] and are considered a seminal work in the tradition of the Commonwealth men, being seen as an example of "extreme libertarianism".^[1]

They condemned corruption and lack of morality within the British political system and warned against tyrannical rule and abuse of power. For instance "all History affords but few Instances of Men trusted with great Power without abusing it, when with Security they could."^[2]

Publication

Trenchard and Gordon had already collaborated in producing the Country Party newsletter The Independent Whig..^[3] The 144 essays were published originally beginning in 1720 until Trenchard's death in 1723^[4] within the London Journal, later in the British Journal. The Letters were collected and printed in bound form in 1734 as Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious.^[5] A measure of their influence is attested by six editions printed by 1755.

Influence

A generation later their arguments immensely influenced the ideals of the American Revolution. According to Peter Karsten's Patriot-Heroes in England and America, Cato's Letters were the most common holdings on the bookcases of the founding fathers.^[6]

These letters also provided inspiration and ideals for the American Revolutionary generation. The essays were distributed widely across the Thirteen Colonies, and frequently quoted in newspapers from Boston to Savannah, Georgia.^[7] Many private libraries in colonial America contained bound volumes of Cato’s Letters,^[8] and there are some estimates that half the private libraries in the American Colonies held bound volumes of Cato's Letters on their shelves.^[9] This has been shown as showing a preferences for "English" rights over John Locke's natural rights.^[10]

The Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank founded by Edward H. Crane in 1977, takes its name from Cato's Letters.^[11]

According to historian Craig Yirush Cato's Letters became central to the republican/liberalism debate thanks to Bernard Bailyn's book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.^[12]