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<font face="Verdana" size="1" color="#002864">http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1355</font>
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<font size="2"><font face="Verdana" color="#002864" size="5"><strong>Cato's Letters on Liberty and Property</strong></font>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana" size="4">by Gary Galles</font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">[Posted October 2<span class="820585812-22102003">2</span>,
2003]</font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><img alt src="http://www.mises.org/images3/catoletters.gif" align="right" border="0" width="136" height="180">On
November 5, 1720, the first letter from Cato (pseudonym for John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon, honoring Cato the Younger, whose dedication to principles of
liberty led him to oppose Julius Caesar) appeared in the London
Journal. Many more followed, reflecting the ideas of John Locke,
soon making it England's most influential newspaper, and leading to
collections of Cato's Letters that were, according to Clinton
Rossiter"the most popular, quotable, esteemed source of political ideas
in the colonial period."</font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">As one of the letters said,"it
is and has been the great design of this paper to maintain and expose the
glorious principles of liberty, and to expose the arts of those who would
darken or destroy them..." That theme was what made it so important to
our heritage as Americans. </font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">According to Ronald Hamowy,"From
its first publication in the 1720s through the revolutionary era that ended
the century, its impact on both sides of the Atlantic was enormous. Its
arguments against oppressive government and in support of the splendors of
freedom were quoted constantly and its authors were regarded as the country's
most eloquent opponents of despotism...[and] frequently served as the basis of
the American response to the whole range of depredations under which the
colonies suffered. Freedom of speech and conscience, the rights
possessed by all Englishmen both by virtue of their constitutional heritage
and by their nature as human beings, the benefits of freedom, the natural
restraints on government, the nature of tyranny, the right of men to resist
oppressive government—all these notions found an eager reception in the
colonies."</font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">It is worth revisiting Cato's
Letters' devotion to liberty, its central theme, which so powerfully
influenced our founding as a nation. Consider some of its memorable
insights (in the order of their appearance):</font>
<div class="Section1">
<ul>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...general liberty...is certainly the right of
all mankind...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...brand those as enemies to human society, who
are enemies to equal and impartial liberty.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty;
they prosper and die together.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The defense of liberty is a noble, a heavenly
office...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Few men have been desperate enough to attack
openly, and barefaced, the liberties of a free people...Even when the
enterprise is begun and visible, the end must be hid, or denied.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the people would constantly be in the
interests of truth and liberty, were it not for external delusion and
external force.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...government executed for the good of all, and
with the consent of all, is liberty; and the word government is
profaned, and its meaning abused, when it signifies anything else.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the inestimable blessing of liberty. Can
we ever over-rate it... It is the parent of virtue, pleasure, plenty,
and security... </font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">In all contentions between liberty and power, the
latter has almost always been the aggressor.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...I know not what treason is, if sapping and
betraying the liberties of a people be not treason...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The people's jealousy tends to preserve liberty;
and the prince's to destroy it.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Now, because liberty chastises and shortens
power, therefore power would extinguish liberty; and consequently
liberty has...cause to be exceeding jealous, and always upon her
defense.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...with the loss of liberty, shame and honor are
lost.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">In most parts of the earth there is neither light
nor liberty..there being, in all places, many engaged, through
interest, in a perpetual conspiracy against them.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Wherever truth is dangerous, liberty is
precarious.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Only government founded upon liberty is a public
blessing; without liberty, it is a public curse...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...no nation ever lost its liberty, but by the
force of foreign invaders, or the domestic treachery of its own
magistrates</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...with liberty light has sprung in...We have
learned that we are as fit to use our own understandings, as they are
whose understandings are no better than ours...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...all mankind will allow it a less crime in any
man to attempt to recover his own liberty, then wantonly and cruelly
to destroy the liberty of his country.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...liberty is the unalienable right of all
mankind. All governments, under whatsoever form they are
administered, ought to be administered for the good of the society;
when they are otherwise administered, they cease to be government, and
become usurpations.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">All men are born free; liberty is a gift which
they receive from God himself...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the nature of government does not alter the
natural right of men to liberty, which is in all political societies
their due.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">By liberty, I understand the power which every
man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruits of his
labor, art and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or
any members of it, by taking from any member, or hindering him from
enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest
industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and
eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he
thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole
lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property...no man
living can divest him but by usurpation, or by his own consent.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">True and impartial liberty is therefore the right
of every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates
of his own mind; to think what he will, to act as he thinks, provided
he acts not to the prejudice of another; to spend his own money
himself, and lay out the produce of his labor his own way; and to
labor for his own pleasure and profits, and not for others who are
idle, and would live...by pillaging and oppressing him, and those that
are like him...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Free government is the protecting of the people
in their liberties by stated rules: Tyranny is a brutish struggle for
unlimited liberty to one or a few, who would rob all the others of
their liberty, and act by no rule but lawless lust.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The love of liberty is an appetite so strongly
implanted in the nature of all living creatures, that even the
appetite of self-preservation...seems to be contained in it; since by
liberty they enjoy the means of preserving themselves, and of
satisfying their desires in the manner which they themselves choose
and like best.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Where liberty is lost, life grows precarious,
always miserable, often intolerable. Liberty is to live upon
one's own terms; slavery is to live at the mercy of another...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">This passion for liberty in men, and their
possession of it, is of that efficacy and importance, that it seems
the parent of all the virtues...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Indeed liberty is the divine source of all human
happiness...The privileges of thinking, saying and doing what we
please, and of growing rich as we can, without any other restriction
than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the
glorious privileges of liberty; and its effects, to live in freedom,
plenty, and safety.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...all civil happiness and prosperity is
inseparable from liberty...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue
are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty...Where liberty is
thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will
find his own account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man
will take from another what he would not part with himself...The
property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince,
and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest
industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the public,
will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will
serve the public...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the entering into society, and becoming
subject to the government, is only the parting with natural liberty,
in some instances, to be protected in the enjoyment of it in others.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Where there is liberty, there are encouragements
to labor, because people labor for themselves, and no one can take
from them the acquisitions which they make by their labor...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">To live securely, happily, and independently, is
the end and effect of liberty...Nor did ever any man that could live
satisfactorily without a master desire to live under one...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...all the advantages of liberty must be lost
with liberty, and all the evils of tyranny must accompany tyranny.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...liberty: You are our Alpha and Omega, our
first and last resource; and when your virtue is gone, all is gone.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">You are born to liberty, and it is in your
interest and duty to preserve it...your governors have every right to
protect and defend you, none to injure and oppress you.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...make good use of this present dawn, this
precious day of liberty...if you suffer it to be lost, will probably
be forever lost.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Nothing is too hard for liberty...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">This therefore is the worst of all prostitutions
and most immoral of all sort of slavery...supporting servitude with
the breath of liberty, and assaulting and mangling liberty with her
own weapons.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...liberty and tyranny... concerns the whole
earth...Why should not the knowledge and love of God be joined to the
knowledge and love of liberty, his best gift, which is the certain
source of all the civil blessings of this life?</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Liberty is salvation in politics...We, who enjoy
the precious, lovely, and invaluable blessing of liberty, know that
nothing can be paid too dear to purchase and preserve it.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Without a doubt, every man has a right to liberty...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">A free trade, a free government, and a free
liberty of conscience, are the rights and the blessings of mankind.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">It is madness in extremity, to hope that a
government founded upon liberty...can be supported by other principles;
and whoever would maintain it by contrary ones intends to blow it up,
let him allege what he will.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...a power inconsistent with liberty...will never
be asked with an intention to make no use of it.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...when a government is founded upon liberty and
equal laws, it is ridiculous for those in the administration to have
any hopes of preserving themselves long there, but by just actions...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Thus it is that liberty is almost everywhere
lost: Her foes are artful, united and diligent: Her defenders are few,
disunited, and inactive.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Truth has so many advantages above error, that
she wants only to be shown...she breaks the bonds of tyranny and
fraud...I would not destroy this liberty by methods which will
inevitably destroy all liberty.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The cause of liberty, and the good of the whole,
ought to prevail...This truth every man acknowledges, when it becomes
his own case...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...liberty...the people's zeal to preserve it has
ever been called ingratitude by such as had designs against it...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">You are born, Gentlemen, to liberty; and from it
you derive all the blessings which you possess.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...civil governments were instituted by men, and
for the sake of men...men have a right to expect from them protection
and liberty, and to oppose rapine and tyranny wherever they are
exercised...</font>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">On the subject of property, the
Letters are equally eloquent:</font>
<ul>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the security of property and the freedom of
speech always go together...where a man cannot call his tongue his own,
he can scarce call anything else his own. </font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The people...the security of their persons and
property is their highest aim...The same can rarely be said of great
men, who, to gratify private passion, often bring down public ruin; who,
to fill their private purses with many thousands, frequently load the
people with many millions...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...men have been knocked down for saying that they
had a right to defend their property by force, when a tyrant attempted
to rob them of it against law.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...property, the preservation of which is the
principal business of government...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The truth is; if the people are suffered to keep
their own, it is the most that they desire: But even this is a happiness
which in few places falls to their lot; they are frequently robbed by
those whom they pay to protect them...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...every man has a right and a call to provide for
himself, to attend upon his own affairs, and to study his own happiness.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">As the preservation of property is the source of
national happiness; whoever violates property, or lessens or endangers
it...he is an enemy to his country...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">When a magistrate fancies he is not made for the
people, but the people for him; that he does not govern for them, but
for himself...the magistrate gives the name of sedition and rebellion to
whatsoever they do for the preservation of themselves and their own
rights.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Every plowman knows a good government from a bad
one, from the effects of it; he knows whether the fruits of his labor be
his own, and whether he enjoy them in peace and security.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...one man is only safe, while it is in the
interest of another to let him alone...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The two great laws of human society, from whence
all the rest derive their course and obligation, are those of equity and
self-preservation: By the first all men are bound alike not to hurt one
another; by the second all men have a right alike to defend themselves.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Government therefore can have no power, but such as
men can give...no man can give to another what is none of his own...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Nor has any man in the state of nature power...to
take away the life of another, unless to defend his own, or what is as
much his own, namely, his property. This power therefore, which no
man has, no man can transfer to another.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Nor could any man in the state of nature have a
right to violate the property of another...as long as he himself was not
injured by that industry and those enjoyments. No man therefore
could transfer to the magistrate that right which he had not himself.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">No man in his senses was ever so wild as to give an
unlimited power to another to take away his life, or the means of
living...But if any man restrained himself from any part of his
pleasures, or parted with any portion of his acquisitions, he did it
with the honest purpose of enjoying the rest with greater security, and
always in subservience to his own happiness, which no man will or can
willingly and intentionally give away to any other whatsoever.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just
rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is
his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with
the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own
private actions and property. A character of which no man living
can divest him but by usurpation, or by his own consent.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">It is a mistaken notion of government, that the
interest of the majority is only to be consulted...otherwise the greater
number may sell the lesser, and divide their estates among themselves;
and so, instead of a society, where all peaceable men are protected,
become a conspiracy of the many against the minority...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Every man is in nature and reason the judge and
disposer of his own domestic affairs...Government being intended to
protect men from the injuries of one another, and not to direct them in
their own affairs...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Let people alone, and they will take care of
themselves, and do it best; and if they do not, a sufficient punishment
will follow their neglect, without the magistrate's interposition and
penalties...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">True and impartial liberty is therefore the right
of every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates
of his own mind; to think what he will, to act as he thinks, provided he
acts not to the prejudice of another; to spend his own money himself,
and lay out the produce of his labor his own way; and to labor for his
own pleasure and profits, and not for others who are idle, and would
live...by pillaging and oppressing him, and those that are like him.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Indeed liberty is the divine source of all human
happiness. To possess, in security, the effects of our industry,
is the most powerful and reasonable incitement to be industrious: And to
be able to provide for our children, and to leave them all that we have,
is the best motive to beget them. But where property is precarious,
labor will languish. The privileges of thinking, saying and doing
what we please, and of growing rich as we can, without any other
restriction, than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one
another, are the glorious privileges of liberty; and its effects, to
live in freedom, plenty, and safety.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue
are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty; laws, which being
the rule of every man's actions, and the measures of every man's power,
make honesty and equity their interest. Where liberty is
thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will
find his own account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will
take from another what he would not part with himself: Honor and
advantage will follow the upright, punishment overtake the oppressor.
The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the
prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's
honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the
public, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he
will serve the public...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Force is often dangerous; and when employed to
acquire what is not ours, it is always unjust; and therefore men, to
procure from others what they had not before, must gain their consent...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Where there is liberty, there are encouragements to
labor, because people labor for themselves, and no one can take from
them the acquisitions which they make by their labor...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">To live securely, happily, and independently, is
the end and effect of liberty...Nor did every any man that could live
satisfactorily without a master desire to live under one...all men are
animated by the passion of acquiring and defending property, because
property is the best support of that independency...as happiness is the
effect of independency, and independency the effect of property; so
certain property is the effect of liberty alone, and can only be secured
by the laws of liberty; laws which are made by consent, and cannot be
repealed without it. </font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">All these blessings, therefore, are only the gifts
and consequences of liberty, and only to be found in free countries,
where power is fixed on one side, and property secured on the other;
where one cannot break bounds without check, penalties or forfeiture,
nor the other suffer diminution without redress...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...chose whether you will be freemen or vassals;
whether you will spend your own money and estates, or let others worse
than you spend them for you: Methinks the choice should be easy.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...while men are men, ambition, avarice, and vanity,
and other passions, will govern their actions; in spite of all equity
and reason, they will be ever usurping, or attempting to usurp, upon the
liberty and fortunes of one another, and all men will be striving to
enlarge their own. Dominion will always desire increase, and
property always to preserve itself; and these opposite views and
interests will be causing a perpetual struggle: But by this struggle
liberty is preserved...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">This is not a dispute about dreams or speculations,
which affect not your property; but it is a dispute whether you shall
have any property, which these wretches throw away...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">Would you allow the common laws of neighborhood to
such as steal or plunder your goods, rob you of your money, seize your
houses, drive you from your possessions, enslave your persons, and
starve your families? No, sure, you would not.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...[pretending concern for the public good] will
appear only to be a project for picking pockets, and getting away other
people's money; which, in reality, at present makes, and ever did make,
most of the squabbles which at any time have disturbed the world.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...government is only the union of many individuals
for their common defense...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...to prevent the unfair gains and depredations of
one another; which is indeed the business of the government; viz. to
secure to every one his own...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">A free trade, a free government, and a free liberty
of conscience, are the rights and the blessings of mankind.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">The first care which wise governors will always
take is...to secure to them the possession of their property, upon which
everything else depends.</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...the product of the whole people's labor and
sustenance is not suffered to be devoured by a few...</font>
</div>
~
<div class="MsoNormal">
<font face="Verdana">...political power...This is the greatest trust
that can be committed by men to one another; and contains in it all that
is valuable here on earth, the lives, the properties, the liberties, of
your countrymen...This great trust, Gentlemen, is not committed to you
for your own sakes, but for the protection, security and happiness of
those whom you represent.</font>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana">Cato's Letters, widely echoed
by our founding fathers, was a central inspiration behind what became America,
and a light of liberty to the rest of the world. As we pass the
anniversary of its first appearance, it merits revisiting that commitment to
liberty which we are all now beneficiaries of, and asking ourselves whether we,
or our government, are still as committed to liberty. </font>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span class="820585812-22102003">__________________________</span></font>
<font face="Verdana">Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at
Pepperdine University. Send him </font><font face="Verdana">MAIL</font><font face="Verdana">,
and see his Mises.org </font><font face="Verdana">Daily
Articles Archive</font><font face="Verdana">.
</font></font>
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