Liberty — and the Business of Government

(Cato's Letters, written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in the early eighteenth century, comprised 144 essays dwelling on the evils of tyranny, unrepresentative government, and political corruption. Historian Clinton Rossiter once called these letters "the most popular, quotable, esteemed source of political ideas in the colonial period."

The following excerpt is from Letter No. 38, dated July 22, 1721, and titled: "The Right and Capacity of the People to judge of Government." With the onset of a major national election, this letter from the two men who taught politics the Founders seems an appropriate source of political lessons for pro-capitalists. Particularly noteworthy is the point [which Jerome Huyler made in his May 1999 Navigator interview] that though individual liberty was the end of government for the Founders, the necessary means to that end was citizenship. )

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 it 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 proceeding 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 enjoys 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 about 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 everyone may, with the more security, attend upon his own? A great and honorable trust; but too seldom honorably executed; those who possess it having it often more at heart to increase 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 fault 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 the jobbers in politics, who, playing their own game under the public cover, subsist upon poor shifts and expedients; starved politicians, who live hand to mouth, from day to day, and following the little views of ambition, avarice, 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 public and deceive it in order to sell it. . . .

But some have said, It is not the business of the private man to meddle with government. A bold, false, and dishonest saying; and whoever says it, either knows not what he says, or cares 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 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 show 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 an honest and free soul, without horror and indignation. It is, in short, a saying, which ought to render the man who utters it forever incapable of place or credit in a free country, as it shows 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: . . . 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 everywhere 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 governors become quickly the virtues and vices of the governed. "The world arranges itself after its ruler's pattern."

Nor is it example alone that does it. Ill governments, subsisting by vice and rapine, are jealous of private virtue, and enemies to private property. They must be wicked and mischievous to be what they are; nor are they secure while anything good or valuable is secure. Hence it is, that to drain, worry, and debauch their subjects, are the steady maxims of their politics, their favorite arts of reigning. In this wretched situation, the people, to be safe, must be poor and lewd: There will be but little industry where property is precarious; small honesty where virtue is dangerous. . . .

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; for virtue, knowledge, and great men, they were the standards of the world; and that 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 of all this felicity and renown; and in these great and fortunate states the people were the principals of government; 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 the greatest Persian monarch, the greatest then upon earth, stand before the face of one Greek city. . . .

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 that 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 public, but the collective body of private men, as every private man is a member of the public. And as the whole ought to be concerned for the preservation of every private individual, it is the duty of every individual to be concerned for the whole, in which he himself is included.

One man, or a few men, have often pretended the public, and meant themselves, and consulted their own personal interest, in instances essential to its well-being; but the whole people, by consulting their own interest, consult the public, and act for the public by acting for themselves: 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 declined 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 that 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; deceived or instructed, and whether they be protected or destroyed: What nonsense and servitude in a free and wise nation!