Cato’s Letters: Against Tyranny and Corruption

0:00If you walk into the capital building in Washington, D.C. today, you can look around and find many quotations from some of the greatest founding fathers and revolutionaries. One of these quotations reads, Without freedom of thought, there could be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. Now this quote is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the famous inventor and famous founding father, but it's actually a quote from Kato's letters. Kato's letters are a set of over 138 essays written by two authors, Thomas Gordon and John Trencher. For the most part, they are only read by specialists, academics and professors today, but the message behind what they talk about is still vitally relevant to politics today, especially freedom of speech. This quotation in the capital building explains a lot about why freedom of speech is taken so seriously in America compared to any other nation on earth. It is largely due to the legacy and the ideas of Kato's letters. But who wrote Kato's letters? Two authors who were quite obscure today but had a massive impact on their time.

1:04The first is John Trencher, the elder of the pair. At Trencher was born into a wealthy English family, spent a brief amount of time in the Irish colonial government, and then married into an even wealthier family. So he had all the time in the world to write, read and research politics. And with this ample free time, he decided to throw his hat into the political ring during 1697, during what was called standing army controversy. A standing army is a professional paid military during peacetime, something we're very used to in the modern world. But in the 17th and 18th century, very few nations had standing armies, and England had never had one before. Trencher believed this was a massive violation of individual liberty because it would allow executive power to control the military, and the military would not be loyal to the people, but instead loyal to the state. At Trencher became extremely popular from writing against the standing army, though he lost the political argument and eventually a standing army was implemented, it made him extremely famous. His famous pamphlet against standing armies went through 12 editions before his death. That's the equivalent of something becoming a bestseller book.

2:11The second of the pair is Thomas Gordon, who is a much more obscure figure. He was born somewhere around Scotland, he possibly had some sort of law degree, but records are quite scant on his early life, so we know very little. What we do know is, the first time we see his name in print is mainly underwriting satirical articles, an example is a letter from the man in the moon. But Gordon eventually turns his attention towards politics, especially when the Bishop of Bangor delivers a sermon arguing against the divine right of kings. The divine right of kings, this old doctrine on the 17th and 18th century, that kings were personally picked by God himself, so the rebel against the government is like rebel against God. Gordon makes a name for himself as a really eloquent defender of religious freedom and political freedom together, and this catches the eye of the older Trencher. And eventually Gordon and Trencher meet in a coffee house in London, and they decide to become collaborators together, arguing for religious freedom. And so to this end, they start their first publication, which is called the Independent Wig, which mainly centered around issues of religious freedom and toleration.

3:14And I love to read this out because in the 18th century, books always had two titles, so the first title was the Independent Wig. The second title is a little bit more of a mouthful. It is the Independent Wig, or a defensive primitive Christianity and a ecclesiastical establishment against the exorbitant claims of fanatical and other priest craft. So obviously the Independent Wig is the easier title to use there. But they start arguing about religious freedom, religious toleration, but eventually they want to get into more political topics, and they're looking for an entry point into British politics. This comes to them under very bad circumstances. So it gets Trencher and Gordon to start writing about politics more properly instead of just religious topics, is something called the South Sea Bubble. There's an old saying that there's nothing new under the sun, and we like to think that lots of our modern scandals are unique to us. But the South Sea Bubble was basically a controversy about an 18th century shell corporation, sounds something very familiar.

4:14The South Sea Bubble was originally a company that was made exclusively by the British government. British government had huge amounts of debts they'd incurred from foreign wars, and they were trying to find a way to finance debt in a new and creative fashion. So kind of copying some of their French compatriots across the channel, they decided to establish this exclusive company that has a monopoly to trade in a certain area supported by the British government, and it's called the South Sea Company. The South Sea Company basically had free reign to trade within the South Seas, what we would call Latin America today, without any sort of competition whatsoever. So this is the perfect situation for a company. You're the only people in the country who are allowed to trade there. Surely the company is going to make tons of money. So what happens is everyone starts investing in the company. Everyone in the country thinks this is a surefire way to make tons of money, and the stock price starts to go up, up, up, up, up. And everyone's making loads of money in the future from this. The South Sea Company is wonderful. It's supported by the British government. It's supported by the royal family. So surely this is the best investment possible that could never ever backfire. That is what many people thought.

5:18And I always say if you've ever feel bad about getting scammed out of your money, Isaac Newton lost his life savings from the South Sea Bubble. Because all bubbles eventually popped, and it was eventually figured out that the company wasn't really worth anything. They never sent a single shipment of goods abroad, they kept their ships in harbor, and they never traded with anyone. War with Spain eventually meant that the South Sea Company never really did any business whatsoever. So eventually this comes out. The South Sea Company collapses, the stock price goes to near nothing, and people lose their life savings, they lose tons of money, and the whole political establishment is implicated. Because British members of parliament are doing insider trading, and even more damning, even members of the royal family were on the insider trading. So in Britain, the political culture had had a new low point in trust for the government. We like to think today that we don't trust the government in many different circumstances, but after the South Sea Bubble, it was really impossible for the British to trust their government the way they had before. It was a huge betrayal of their traditional trust. And this is kind of the scene in which Kato's letters starts to get written.

6:24So Kato's letters begin to be published in the London Journal, and initially there are kind of short essays that talk about biting political subjects. The initial 14 or so are mainly about the South Sea Bubble. That's seemingly all the first few are about just talking about how the South Sea Bubble was a terrible betrayal of the government, and they kind of talk about how it's this new threat. It's not a threat just from the private sector or just from the public sector. It's the unholy alliance of both, what we call today, crony capitalism, when the government gives out special favors to particular companies. So Kato's letters originally starts as this kind of tirade against crony capitalism and the political establishment of their day. But eventually, they kind of run out of talking about the South Sea Bubble. There's only so many ways you can explain how terrible the government is now evil people are. And so instead they start to talk about all sorts of topics. And one of the first things they want to talk about after discussing the South Sea Bubble is the importance of freedom of speech. And this letter on freedom of speech became popular extremely quickly because it established a new kind of philosophy that trenchant and Gordon writing as Kato wanted to embody.

7:27This idea that good citizen does not just sit there and let bad things happen. A good citizen is active, vigilant, and in some ways almost looking for vengeance when they're wrong or their rights are violated. So Kato's letters became extremely popular. And they had a three-year run, they published 138 letters, and then people wanted them back so badly, they published an additional six just to say another farewell from Kato. They were really popular, but why were they so popular? I think the first step is that they were written in a way that regular people wanted to read them. When I first started reading Kato's letters myself, I thought they were so interesting, so fascinating, and so passionate. I thought that this might not translate to other people, but the more I've shown them to people, the more I see their language is a little bit universal. I think a lot of people appreciate how open they are and how honest they are about their complaints with government. But they mainly want to talk about three big topics. They talk about all sorts, the nature of liberty, of tyranny, about free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion.

8:29They even talk about kind of obscuring esoteric topics like ghosts and superstition, but all of these various topics all coalesce around three main points. Firstly, Trentred and Gordon want to disprove the idea of the divine right of kings. The idea that government is handpicked by God. They say, no, government is not made by God. Government is made by men, for men. And in that regard as well, if government is made by men, it can be unmade by them as well. Secondly, they want to disprove the doctrine of passive obedience. I'm sure we've all heard a variation of this doctrine. It was the idea that whatever the law commands of people, they must obey because it is the law, it is the highest of the land. They say no, but law depends on much more than words on pieces of paper, and it more depends on our natural rights and the spirit that the law was written in. Thirdly, and how the most classical liberal theme that they touch on is the primacy of liberty in politics. What I mean by the primacy of liberty in politics is that liberty is the most important political value.

9:35Sometimes, libertarians and classical liberals are told that they care about liberty above all else, but that's kind of a misnomer. A more accurate idea is that libertarians and classical liberals and people like Trentred and Gordon believe that liberty is the most important political value to talk about. You can care about your life, your family, your friends, and your religion, but they're not political topics. We're talking about politics, we're talking about what liberty people deserve, what their rights are, what the government can and can't do. Trentred and Gordon are really interesting and eccentric figures. They're followers of classical liberal figures like John Locke, but they have a huge intellectual scrapbook that they pull from. They're constantly quoting ancient Roman historians, ancient Greeks, 17th century philosophers, even some heretical Catholic philosophers. They're just as likely to reference Thomas Hobbes as they are John Locke. So, it's easy to try and put them into one category, but really they're their own unique kind of philosophy, one that was based around vigilance and active citizenship checking government power.

10:35The first thing to think about in politics for kiddos letters is, where does the government come from? They write in letter 60, the nature of government does not alter the natural right of men to liberty. As we said, governments are made by men, for men, and can be unmade by them as well. They have this idea that the main point of the government is to protect people's rights and little else. It's not to tell them what religion to believe in, what kind of family to have. It's mainly protect their natural rights that were pre-existing before the state. Trentred and Gordon, as writing as kiddo, did not believe that our rights came from government writing them down. They instead said that they pre-existed government. Government is merely kind of the best way to protect them. And once government stops protecting rights, it stops being legitimate. They say that quite often government is the cure to the disease of disorder, but quite often the cure is actually worse than the illness itself. This leads Trentred and Gordon to some radical conclusions, mainly about the equality of men. Not the equality of people in every skill and talent, but instead our natural equality.

11:39They say that no man ever rose above the rest, but by force or consent. Obviously force being wrong and consent being a legitimate way of game power. In one of their letters they write, whoever pretends to be naturally superior to other men, claims from nature what she never gave to any man. The idea for the time is quite obvious, that there is no person who is naturally born to rule over others. The only way to legitimately rule over other people is with their consent. Now again, this seems like a very boring idea for today. When the era of powdered wigs, the kings and lords and barons, this is a radical, world-shifting idea that we're all born equal. It would later become a staple of the Declaration of Independence. 50 years before the Declaration of Independence was published, kiddos letters got the gist of the ideas that Jefferson would eventually put down on paper. But all men are born equal, and that political power requires justification. It's not that our liberty requires justification, it's that the curtailing of liberty is what needs to be justified first and foremost.

12:42This idea that there's a presumption of liberty, that politics is the one that has to be argued for, not freedom. Gordon and Trencher were both students of history, and they saw time and time again that over hundreds of years, government often violated people's rights. Despite all the high-minded talk that government was made to protect the rights of man, it was quite often found violating the rights of man. The problem is that power can exist without liberty, but liberty can't exist without a little bit of power. So the difficulty for Trencher and Gordon was to try and find that balance between political liberty and political power. They believe that quite often, the scales was tipped on the side of political power, and liberty had very little support. They believe that really one of the only countries in the world that had liberty was their home country of England. And this leads them to an almost apocalyptic philosophy, that the vast majority of times that government is instituted, it is actually a blight upon the world. It kills people, it depopulates the planet, it brings people towards irreligious ideas.

13:42And for Trencher and Gordon, government isn't just like a nuisance that violates our rights, it's an existential threat to humanity, both spiritually and physically. Trencher and Gordon, writing as Kato's letters, were very different for their time. The vast majority of English authors talked about the importance of having virtuous and good leaders, but Kato talks with something very different. The idea that the vast majority of people can never be trusted with political power. Even people who seem good and virtuous in the surface can rarely be trusted with power. And one of their letters they write, the experience of every age convinces us that we must not judge men by what they ought to do, but by what they will do. And all of history affords but a few instances of men trusted with great power without abusing it. Another letter they write, the mind of man, which is weak and limited, ought never to be trusted with a power that is boundless. For Kato, the main enemy is not just political power, it's arbitrary political power.

14:43What does something being arbitrary means? Imagine a teacher at your school asked you to do homework, and they said, read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, cover to cover. And then the next day they changed their mind and said, actually, no, please read the full Webster's Dictionary, cover to cover. This is what absolute arbitrary authority is, the idea that someone can change their mind on a whim and tell you what to do effectively. For Kato, political power always has to have limits to it, has to have checks and balances, has to have firm limits on the government can and cannot do. And for Kato, liberty is to live under one standing rule that's applied to all people. Tierney is to live under the particular personal whim of one person. To be free is to live under the law, to be under tyranny is to live under the whims of other people, to be commanded what to do. So if you read Kato's letters, so many of them talk again and again about the terrors of tyranny and authoritarianism. So a big part of the letters as well was talking about how do we stop these regimes from ever arising in the first place.

15:46Some of the simple answers that Trentred and Gordon give is having regular elections, having a system of separations of powers and checks and balances on governors. But they thought that while these are really important legal institutions, they can only do so much. And they thought one of the main ways of protecting people from government interference was freedom of speech. We think of freedom of speech as a modern idea, but it stretches all the way back to the wars of religious sectarianism in the 17th and 18th century. A lot of religious authors decided the idea of freedom of speech as a religious idea, the idea that people can freely converse the Bible and talk about all the different points of contention. And so originally, when we talk about freedom of speech in this period, freedom of speech meant freedom of religious speech, not freedom of political speech. Trentred and Gordon are actually the first people to ever take these ideas of freedom of speech and apply them to the political world. And why they thought this was so important is because they thought it was a check upon power. And he says that the importance of freedom of speech is so people are loud about the abuses of power.

16:47So when bad things happen to them, they tell everyone else and get everyone into an angry fury about this. That government isn't allowed to trot over people's rights willy-nilly, that people have loud complaints they will give. They say, this sacred privilege is so essential to free government that the security of property and freedom of speech always go together. And in those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything else his own. And they continue to talk about why freedom of speech is so important, not just as a right, but even as a duty that we have a duty to speak out against political abuses. They write, freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty. They prosper and die together. And it is the terror of traders and oppressors and a barrier against them. It produces excellent writers and encourages men of fine genius. So we're used to thinking of freedom of speech as a right today. We have the right to say what we want. And that is definitely how trenchant and Gordon and Keto's letters thought of freedom of speech.

17:47But they also thought it was a duty as well. It is a barrier to tyrants and oppressors and traders. It is important that freedom of speech not just as a right, but as a right that protects all other rights. For Keto, freedom of speech is part of the idea of civic virtue. If virtue is what it means to be a good person, civic virtue is what it means to be a good citizen. Classical liberals and libertarians don't often talk about the idea of civic virtue because they question the legitimacy of the state. So it makes you wonder why we civically virtue us. And normally when we think of civic virtue, we think of John F. Kennedy's famous line, ask not where a country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. The idea of self-sacrifice for your nation. But Keto's letters put a lot of effort into redefining civic virtue. They said that real civic virtue isn't sacrificing yourself to the collective whole. It's aggressively and gellously defending yours and other people's rights. They talk about how the abuse of words is what changes politics.

18:49And they say one of the problems is that people call civic virtue one thing, but they really mean another. So often in their day, people would say you have to have more civic virtue, but they really mean is you have to have more deference or loyalty to the political regime that big. And one of their letters about civic virtue, they write. In arbitrary countries, it is public spirit to be blind slaves to the will of the prince and to slaughter or be slaughtered for him at his pleasure. But they say in free nations, civic virtue or public spirit is something else. Public spirit is another thing. It is to combat force and delusion, is to reconcile the true interests of the governed and the governors, is to expose imposters to resist oppressors, is to maintain the people in liberty, plenty, ease, and security. Civic virtue and freedom of speech are so important for Keto because they didn't trust people in political power. They believe that regular people, especially with the power of print and writing, could amplify their voices and they could really attack government abuses on people's rights.

19:50Again, they believe that civic virtue is kind of the lifeblood of a good political community and that freedom of speech is the main weapon that citizens use to defend themselves from states. This lesson will be really embodied mostly by the American revolutionaries. Keto's letters was extremely popular in their day and they printed 10,000 pamphlets a week and of those 10,000 pamphlets you'd hand them on to 10 more people down the road. So their readership was huge, they're extremely popular in England, extremely popular and extremely controversial. But eventually their popularity dies down, but it kind of re-emerges in the colonial world. In the 13 colonies of America, founding fathers start to read Keto's letters and start treating it as a dress rehearsal for the American revolution. In the colonies of the 1760s and 1770s, we always talk about how people were crying about revolution and liberty, but it wasn't so easy. If you published something that was critical of the British government, you'd have red coats at your door very quickly. So the best thing to do was a new strategy, it was to use part of British history against them, to use Keto's letters to reprint them in newspapers and articles and journals, as way of being critical of the British government without being directly critical of it.

21:02So people would often print out Keto's letters in the South Sea bubble or on the nature of tyranny as a way of criticizing the British crown and parliament, without directly criticizing them. So in this way the American revolutionaries use Keto as a smart workaround, but also a philosophical resource to again have a dress rehearsal for what the revolution would really look like. And once the American revolution starts, we can kind of see some of the ideas of Keto come through, the importance of freedom of speech, this idea of civic virtue of protecting other people's rights. And most importantly, this active, vigilant, and distrust of political power. As we already talked about in the beginning, a young Benjamin Franklin quoted Keto's letters, but he really wasn't the only person. John Dickerson's letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania also quotes Keto's letters. They were so widely known that by the 1770s, John Adams admitted that they were generally popular reading, with even as wife quoting them in letters to him sometimes. Throughout the colonies, Keto's letters was quoted and discussed in all sorts of colonial newspapers, and they were stored in all sorts of colonial libraries.

22:03It seems that nearly everyone had some sort of way of accessing Keto's letters and using the knowledge that they had. You got to an extent that even one of the sources I read about was one of the members of the founding generation died, and in his will he left his books to his sons. And he said in these books contained the spirit of liberty. One of the most important books in his collection was of course Keto's letters. At the beginning, I talked about how Keto's letters is mainly for specialists and professors, but in the 18th century, they were for revolutionaries and for rebels. A large part of Keto's letters explains why America has the unique political culture that it does. I'm from Ireland, and I always looked over at America in all that they had such an absolute regime of freedom of speech. Obviously, there's qualifications, but no country takes freedom of speech as seriously as America. And that in a large part is due to Keto's letters bringing this idea that freedom of speech is the bulwark of liberty. It is the right that protects all other rights. And as well, it explains part of America's political culture. It explains why the founding fathers took so much from Keto's letters.

23:06Their idea of civic virtue really aligns up to what they thought civic virtue was. It wasn't passively accepting what your government does or sacrificing yourself as the collective. Instead, it was the idea of being an active, distrustful citizen who is vigilant of the government. It explains so much about American culture despite the vast majority of Americans never even reading them in the first place. I think I want to end with a quote from Keto's letters that goes as follows. Power is like fire. It warms, scorches, or destroys according as it is watched, provoked, or increased. I think that this analogy gets to the core of why talking about government is so hard. As I said before, power can exist without liberty, but liberty can't exist without a little bit of power, and finding that balance is so difficult. And in a similar way, it's like fire. Humans can't live without fire, but that doesn't mean we can't get burned if we aren't careful. And Keto's letters is all about staying vigilant and staying careful, and not trusting government,

24:06because we shouldn't judge men by what they ought to do, but what they will do. And we know that with arbitrary and unlimited power, people will abuse it, no matter how virtuous they report to be. So a big part of Keto's letters explains why America has this massive distrust of political power, whose political power is just like fire. Sometimes it can warm us, but often we find ourselves scorched. My name is Paul Meeney, I'm the Editor for Intellectual History at Libertarianisms Outwork. And if you enjoyed this, I want to learn more about underrated figures in the classical liberal tradition, and just people who made the world a freer and better place. Go and Libertarians in the Dorg and find more episodes of my podcast, Portraits of Liberty. Thank you very much for listening.