Founding Documents: Cato's Letters

1721 Thomas Gordon

The World has, from Time to Time, been led into such a long Maze of Mistakes, by those who gained by deceiving, that whoever would instruct Mankind, must begin with removeing their Errors; and if they were every where honestly apprized of Truth, and restored to their Senses, there would not remain one Nation of Bigots or Slaves under the Sun: A Happiness always to be wished, but never expected.

In most Parts of the Earth, there is neither Light nor Liberty; and even in the best Parts of it they are but little encouraged, and coldly maintained, there being, in all Places, many engaged through Interest in a perpetual Conspiracy against them.  They are the two greatest Civil Blessings, inseparable in their Interests, and the mutual Support of each other; and whoever would destroy one of them, must destroy both:  Hence it is, that we everywhere find Tyranny and Imposture, Ignorance and Slavery joined together, and Oppressors and Deceivers mutually aiding and paying constant Court to each other.  Wherever Truth is dangerous, Liberty is precarious.

Of all the Sciences that I know in the World, that of Government concerns us most, and is the easiest to be known, and yet is the least understood.  Most of those who manage it would make the lower World believe that there is I know not what Difficulty and Mystery in it, far above vulgar Understandings; which Proceedings of theirs is direct Craft and Imposture: Every Ploughman knows a good Government from a bad one, from the Effects of it; he knows whether the Fruits of his Labour be his own, and whether he enjoy them in Peace and Security:  And if he do not know the Principles of Government, it is for want of Thinking and Enquiry, for they lie open to common Sense; but People are generally taught not to think of them at all, or to think wrong of them.

What is Government, but a Trust committed by All, or the Most, to One or a Few, who are to attend upon the affairs of All, that every one may, with the more Security, attend upon his own?  A great and honourable Trust, but too seldom honourably executed; those who possess it having it often more at Heart to encrease their Power than to make it useful, and to be terrible rather than beneficent.  It is therefore a Trust, which ought to be bounded with many and strong Restraints, because Power renders Men wanton, insolent to others, and fond of themselves.  Every Violation therefore of this Trust, where such Violation is considerable, ought to meet with proportionable Punishment; and the smallest Violation of it ought to meet with some, because Indulgence to the least Faults of Magistrates, may be Cruelty to a whole People.

Honesty, Diligence, and plain Sense, are the only Talents necessary for the executing of this trust; and the public Good is its only End: As to Refinements and Finesses, they are often only the false Appearances of Wisdom and Parts, and oftener tricks to hide Guilt and Emptiness; and they are generally mean and dishonest; they are the Arts of Jobbers in Politicks, who playing their own Game under the public Cover, subsist upon poor Shifts and Expedients; starv'd Politicians, who live from Hand to Mouth, from Day to Day, and following the little Views of Ambition, Avarice, and Revenge, and the like personal Passions, are ashamed to avow them, yet want Souls great enough to forsake them; small wicked Statesmen, who make a private Market of the Publick, and deceive it in order to sell it.

These are the poor Parts which great and good Governors scorn to play, and cannot play; their Designs, like their Stations, being purely publick, are open and undisguised.  They do not consider their People as their Prey, nor lie in Ambush for their Subjects; nor dread, and treat and surprize them like Enemies, as all ill Magistrates do; who are not Governors but Jaylors and Spunges, who chain them and squeeze them, and yet take it very ill if they do but murmur; which is yet much less than a People so abused ought to do.  There have been Times and Countries, when publick Enemies have been the same individual Men.  What a melancholy Reflection is this, that the most terrible and mischievous Foes to a Nation should be its own Magistrates!  And yet in every enslaved Country, which is almost every Country, this is their woful Case.

Honesty and Plainness go always together, and the Makers and Multipliers of Mysteries, in the political Way, are shrewdly to be suspected of dark designs.  Cincinnatus was taken from the plough to save and defend the Roman state; an Office which he executed honestly and successfully, without the Grimace and Gains of a Statesman.  Nor did he afterwards continue obstinately at the Head of Affairs, to form a Party, raise a Fortune, and settle himself in Power:  As he came into it with universal Consent, he resigned it with universal Applause.

It seems that Government was not in those days become a Trade, at least not a gainful Trade––Honest Cincinnatus was but a Farmer:  And happy had it been for the Romans, if, when  they were enslaved, they could have taken the Administration out of the hands of the Emperors, and their refined Politicians, and committed it to such farmers, or any farmers.  It is certain, that many of their Imperial Governors acted more ridicuously than a Board of Ploughmen would have done, and more barbarously than a Club of Butchers could have done.

But some have said, It is not the Business of private Men to meddle with Government.  A bold, false, and dishonest Saying; and whoever says it, either knows not what he says, or care not, or slavishly speaks the Sense of others.  It is a Cant now almost forgot in England, and which never prevailed but when Liberty and the Constitution were attacked, and never can prevail but upon the like Occasion.

It is a Vexation to be obliged to answer Nonsense, and confute  absurdities:  but since it is and has been the great design of this Paper [The London Journal] to maintain and explain the glorious Principles of liberty, and to expose the Arts of those who would darken or destroy them; I shall here particularly shew the Wickedness and Stupidity of the above Saying; which is fit to come from no Mouth but that of a Tyrant or a Slave, and can never be heard by any Man of and honest and free Soul, without horror and Indignation:  It is, in short, a Saying, which ought to render the Man who utters it for ever incapable of Place or Credit in a free country, as it shews the malignity of his Heart, and the Baseness of his Nature, and as it is the pronouncing of a Doom upon our constitution.––A Crime, or rather a Complication of Crimes, for which a lasting Infamy ought to be but Part of the Punishment.

But to the Falsehood of the Thing:  Publick Truths ought never to be kept  secrets; and they who do it, are guilt of Solecism and a Contradiction:  Every Man ought to know what it concerns all to know.  Now, nothing upon Earth is of a more Universal Nature than Government; and every private Man upon Earth has a concern in it, because in it is concerned, and nearly and immediately concerned, his Virtue, his Property, and the security of his Person:  And where all these are best preserved and advanced, the Government is best administered; and where they are not, the Government is impotent, wicked, or unfortunate; and where the Government is so; the People will be so, there being always and every where a certain Sympathy and Analogy between the Nature of the Government and the Nature of the People.  This holds true in every Instance.  Public men are the Patterns of private; and the Virtues and Vices of the Government become quickly the Virtues and Vices of the Governed.

Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis.

Nor is it Example alone that does it.  Ill Governments, subsisting by Vice and Rapine, are jealous of private Virtue, and Enemies of private Property.  Opes pro  crimine, & ob virtutes certissimum exitium.  They must be wicked and mischievous to be what they are, nor are they secure as long as any Thing good or valuable is secure.  Hence it is, that to drain worry, and debauch their Subjects, are the steady Maxims of their Politicks, and their favourite Arts of Reigning.  In this wretched Situation, the People, to be safe, must be poor and lewd:  There will be little Industry, where Property is precarious; small Honesty where Virtue is dangerous.

Profuseness or Frugality, and the like Virtues or Vices, which affect the Publick, will be practised in the City, if they are in the Court; and in the Country if they are in the City.  Even Nero (that Royal Monster in Man's Shape) was adored by the common herd at Rome, as much as he was flatter'd by the Great; and both the Little and the Great admir'd, or pretended to admire his Manners, and many to imitate them.  Tacitus tells us that those sort of People long lamented him, and rejoiced in the Choice of a Successor that resembled him, the profligate Otho.

Good Government does, on the contrary, produce great Virtue, much Happiness, and many People.  Greece and Italy, while they continued free, were each of them, for the Number of Inhabitants, like one continued City; and for Vertue, knowledge, and great Men, they were the Standards of the World; and the Age and Country that could come nearest to them, has ever since been reckoned the happiest.  Their Government, their Free Government was the root of all these Advantages, and all this Felicity and  Renown; and in these great and fortunate States, the People were the Principals in the Government; and Laws were made by their Judgment and Authority, and by their Voice and Commands were Magistrates created and condemned.  The city of Rome could conquer the World; nor could then great Persian monarch, the greatest then upon the Earth stand before one Greek city.

But what are Greece and Italy now? Rome has in it a Herd of pamper'd monks, and a few starving Lay Inhabitants; the Campania ofRome, the finest spot of Earth in Europe, is a Desert,.  And for the modern Greeks, they are a few abject contemptible Slaves, kept under Ignorance, Chains, and Vileness, by theTurkish Monarch, who keeps a great Part of the Globe intensly miserable, that he may seem Great without being so.

Such  is the Difference between one Government and another, and of such important Concernment is the Nature and Administration of Government to a People.  And to say  the private Men have nothing to do with Government, is to say that private Men have nothing to do with their own Happiness and Misery.

What is the Publick, but the collective Body of private Men, as every private Man is a Member of the Publick?  And as the Whole ought to be concerned for the Preservation of every private Individual, it is the Duty of every Individual to be concern'd for the Whole, in which himself is included.

One Man, or a few Men, have often pretended the Publick, and meant themselves, and consulted their own personal Interest, in Instances essential to its Wellbeing; but the whole People, by consulting their own Interest, consult the Publick, and act for the Publick by acting for themselves; and this is particularly the Spirit of our constitution, in which the whole Nation is represented; and our Records afford Instances, where the House of Commons have declin'd entering upon a Question of Importance, till they had gone into the Country, and consulted their Principals, the People: So far were they from thinking that private Men had no Right to meddle with Government.  In Truth, our whole worldly Happiness and Misery (abating for Accidents and Diseases) are owing to the Order or Mismanagement of Government; and he who says, private Men have no Concern with Government, does wisely and modestly tell us, that Men have no Concern in that which concerns them most; it is saying that People ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, are deceived or instructed, and whether they be protected or destroyed: What Nonsense and Servitude in a free and wise Nation!

For myself, who have thought pretty much of these Matters, I am of Opinion, that a whole Nation are like to be as much attached to themselves, as one Man or a few Men are like to be, who may by many Means be detached from the Interest of a Nation.  It is certain that one Man, and several Men, may be bribed into an Interest opposite to that of the Publick; but it is as certain that a whole Country can never find an Equivalent for itself, and consequently a whole Country can never be bribed.  It is the eternal Interest of every Nation, that their Government should be good; but they who direct it frequently reason a contrary Way, and find their own Account in Plunder and Oppression; and while the publick Voice is pretended to be declared, by one or a few, for vile and private Ends, the Publick know nothing of what is done, till they feel the terrible Effects of it.

By the Bill of Rights, and the act of Settlement, at the Revolution, a Right is asserted to the People of applying to the King and to the Parliament by Petition and Address, for a Redress of publick Grievances and Mismanagements, when such there are, of which They are left to judge:  And the Difference between free and enslaved Countries lies principally here, that in the former, their Magistrates must consult the Voice and Interest of the People; but in the latter, the private Will, Interest, and Pleasure of the Governors, are the sole End and Motives of their Administration.

Such is the Difference between England and Turkey; which Difference, they who say that private Men have no Right to concern themselves with Government, would absolutely destroy; they would convert Magistrates into Bashaws, and introduce Popery into Politicks.  The late Revolution stands upon the very opposite Maxim; and that any Man dares to contradict it since the Revolution, would be amazing, did we not know that there are, in every Country, Hirelings who would betray it for a Sop.