Cato's Letters
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Cato's Letters
| Full title | Cato's Letters, or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects |
|---|---|
| Author | John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon |
| Published | 1720–1723 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | One hundred and forty-four weekly essays published in the London press in 1720–23 under the pen name “Cato” by the Whig writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon — begun as an attack on the corruption exposed by the South Sea Bubble and widened into a case for free speech, religious toleration, and watching power rather than trusting it. Bound volumes circulated widely in the colonies, and the vocabulary the American revolutionaries reached for — corruption, virtue, encroaching power — is largely this vocabulary. |
Cato’s Letters
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published by the Substack writer in December 2025, in the Ages 13-99+ band under Political Philosophy, at Lexile 1100 — the lowest in that genre, which fits: these were newspaper essays written for a general reader.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the curriculum this came from; the adult “Ages 13-99+” band is the part Kyle carded.
- John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon — the two authors behind “Cato”.
- Free Speech — Letter 15, “Of Freedom of Speech”, is one of the most-quoted early statements of the principle.
- Founding Fathers — the readership that made the letters historically consequential.
- Ideological Family Tree — the portfolio idea: this is an ancestor text, read in order to recognise its descendants in American political argument.
- People Over Politics — the letters’ governing suspicion of concentrated power.
- Enlightenment — the wider intellectual moment.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.