Cato’s Letters

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.

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.