A Response to Cato's
Fourth through Seventh Letters
Thomas Paine
[An open letter signed by
The Forester, Pennsylvania Journal, 24 April, 1776]
Cato's partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are
men, too, who have not virtue enough to be angry and that crime
perhaps is Cato's. He who dares not offend cannot be honest. Having
thus balanced the charge, I proceed to Cato's 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th
letters, all of which, as they contain but little matter, I shall
dismiss with as little trouble and less formality.
His fourth letter is introduced with a punning Soliloquy - Cato's
title to soliloquies is indisputable; because no man cares for his
company.? However, he disowns the writing it, and assures his
readers that it "was really put into his hands." I always
consider this confirming mode of expression as betraying a suspicion
of one's self; and in this place it amounts to just as much as if
Cato had said, "you know my failing, Sirs, but what I tell you
now is really true." Well, be it so, Cato; you shall have all
the credit you ask for; and as to when or where or how you got it,
who was the author, or who the giver, I shall not enquire after;
being fully convinced, by the poetical merit of the performance,
that tho' the writer of it may be an Allen,1 he'll never be a
Ramsay.† Thus much for the soliloquy; and if this gentle
chastisement should be the means of preventing Cato or his colleague
from mingling their punning nonsense with subjects of such a serious
nature as the present one truly is, it will answer one of the ends
it was intended for.
Cato's fourth, and the greatest part of his fifth letter, are
constructed on a false meaning uncivilly imposed on a passage quoted
from Common Sense; and for which, the author of that
pamphlet hath a right to expect from Cato the usual concessions. I
shall quote the passage entire, with Cato's additional meaning, and
the inferences which he draws therefrom. He introduces it with
saying, "In my remarks on the pamphlet before me I shall first
consider those arguments on which, he (the author) appears to lay
his chief stress; and these are collected under four heads in his
conclusion, one of which is, 'It is the custom of nations when any
two are at war, for some other powers not engaged in the quarrel, to
step in by way of Mediators, and bring about the prelimenaries of a
peace; but while America calls herself the subject of Great-Britain,
no power, however well disposed she may be, can offer her
mediation.' "The meaning contained in this passage is so
exceedingly plain, and expressed in such easy and familiar terms,
that it scarcely admits of being made plainer. No one, I think,
could have understood it any other wise, than that while we continue
to call ourselves British Subjects, the quarrel between us can only
be called a family quarrel, in which, it would be just as indelicate
for any other nation to advise, or any ways to meddle or make, even
with their offers of mediation, as it would be for a third person to
interfere in a quarrel between a man and his wife. Whereas were we
to make use of that natural right which all other nations have done
before us, and erect a government of our own, independant of all the
world, the quarrel could then be no longer called a family quarrel,
but a regular war between the two powers of Britain and America, in
the same manner as one carried on between England and France; and in
this state of political separation, the neutral powers might kindly
render their mediation, (as hath always been the practice) and bring
about the preliminaries of a peace, - not a union, Cato, that is
quite another thing. But instead of Cato's taking it in this easy
and natural sense, he flies away on a wrong scent, charges the
author with proposing to call in foreign assistance; and under this
willful falsehood raises up a mighty cry after nothing at all. He
begins his wild and unintelligible comment in the following manner:
"Is this," says he, (meaning the passage already quoted) "common
sense, or common nonsense? Surely peace? with Great Britain cannot
be the object of this writer, after the horrible character he has
given of the people of that country, and telling us, that
reconciliation with them would be our ruin. The latter part of the
paragraph seems to cast some light upon the former, although it
contradicts it, for these mediators are not to interfere for making
up the quarrel, but to widen it by supporting us in a declaration,
That we are not the subjects of Great Britain. A new sort of
business truly for mediators. But this," continues Cato, "leads
us directly to the main enquiry - What foreign power is able to give
us this support? "What support, Cato? The passage you have
quoted neither says a syllable, nor insinuates a hint about support:
- It speaks only of neutral powers in the neighbourly character of
mediators between those which are at war; and says it is the custom
of European courts to do so. Cato hath already raised Commissioners
into Ambassadors; but how he could transform mediators into men in
arms, and mediation into military alliance, is surpassingly strange.
Read the part over again, Cato; if you find I have charged you
wrongfully, and will point it out, I will engage that the author of
Common Sense shall ask your pardon in the public papers, with his
name to it: but if the error be yours, the concession on your part
follows as a duty.
Though I am fully persuaded that Cato does not believe one half of
what himself has written, he nevertheless takes amazing pains to
frighten his readers into a belief of the whole. Tells them of
foreign troops (which he supposes we are going to send for) ravaging
up and down the country; of their "bloody massacres,
unrelenting persecutions, which would harrow up (says he) the very
souls of protestants and freemen. "Were they coming, Cato,
which no one ever dreamed of but yourself (for thank God, we want
them not,) it would be impossible for them to exceed, or even to
equal, the cruelties practised by the British army in the
East-Indies: The tying men to the mouths of cannon and "blowing
them away "was never acted by any but an English General, or
approved by any but a British Court.? Read the proceedings of the
Select Committee on Indian Affairs.
From temporal fears Cato proceeds to spiritual ones, and in a
hypocritical panic, asks, "To whose share will Pennsylvania
fall-that of his most Catholic, or his most Christian King? I
confess," continues he, "that these questions stagger me."
I don't wonder at it, Cato-I am glad to hear that some kind of
remorse hath overtaken you - that you begin to feel that you are "heavy
laden." You have had a long run, and the stoutest heart must
fail at last.
Cato perceiving that the falsehoods in his fourth letter past
unreproved, ventured boldly on a fifth, in which he continues,
enlarging on the same convenient bugbear. "In my last,"
says he, "some notice was taken of the dangerous proposition
held up by the author of Common Sense, for having recourse
to foreign assistance." When will Cato learn to speak the
truth! The assistance which we hope for from France is not armies,
(we want them not) but arms and ammunition. We have already received
into this province only, near two hundred tons of saltpetre and
gunpowder, besides muskets. Surely we may continue to cultivate a
useful acquaintance, without such malevolent beings as Cato raising
his barbarous slander thereon. At this time it is not only
illiberal, but impolitic, and perhaps dangerous to be pouring forth
such torrents of abuse, as his fourth and fifth letters contain,
against the only power that in articles of defence hath supplied our
hasty wants.
Cato, after expending near two letters in beating down an idol
which himself only had set up, proudly congratulates himself on the
defeat, and marches off to new exploits, leaving behind him the
following proclamation: "Having thus," says Cato, "dispatched
his (the author of Common Sense's) main argument for independence,
which he founds on the necessity of calling in foreign assistance, I
proceed to examine some other parts of his work." Not a
syllable, Cato, doth any part of the pamphlet in question say of
calling in foreign assistance, or even forming military alliances.
The dream is wholly your own, and is directly repugnant both to the
letter and spirit of every page in the piece. The idea which Common
Sense constantly holds up, is to have nothing to do with the
political affairs of Europe. "As Europe," says the
pamphlet, "is our market for trade, we ought to form no
political connections with any part of it. It is the true interest
of America to steer clear of all European contentions." And
where it proposes sending a manifesto to foreign courts (which it is
high time to do) it recommends it only for the purpose of announcing
to them the impossibility of our living any longer under the British
government, and of "assuring such Courts of our peaceable
disposition towards them, and of our desire of entering into trade
with them. "Learn to be an honest man, Cato, and then thou wilt
not be thus exposed.-I have been the more particular in detecting
Cato here, because it is on this bubble that his air-built battery
against independance is raised-a poor foundation indeed! which even
the point of a pin, or a pen, if you please, can demolish with a
touch, and bury the formidable Cato beneath the ruins of a vapour.
From this part of his fifth letter to the end of his seventh he
entirely deserts the subject of independance, and sets up the proud
standard of Kings, in preference to a Republican form of Government.
My remarks on this part of the subject will be general and concise.
In this part of the debate Cato shelters himself chiefly in
quotations from other authors, without reasoning much on the matter
himself;? in answer to which, I present him with a string of maxims
and reflexions, drawn from the nature of things, without borrowing
from any one. Cato may observe, that I scarcely ever quote; the
reason is, I always think. But to return.
Government should always be considered as a matter of convenience,
not of right. The scripture institutes no particular form of
government, but it enters a protest against the monarchical form;
and a negation on one thing, where two only are offered, and one
must be chosen, amounts to an affirmative on the other. Monarchical
government was first set up by the Heathens, and the Almighty
permitted it to the Jews as a punishment. "I gave them a King
in mine anger." - Hosea xiii. II. A Republican form of
government is pointed out by nature - Kingly governments by an
unequality of power. In Republican governments, the leaders of the
people, if improper, are removable by vote; Kings only by arms: an
unsuccessful vote in the first case, leaves the voter safe; but an
unsuccessful attempt in the latter, is death. Strange, that that
which is our right in the one, should be our ruin in the other. From
which reflexion follows this maxim. That that mode of government in
which our right becomes our ruin, cannot be the right one. If all
human nature be corrupt, it is needless to strengthen the corruption
by establishing a succession of Kings, who, be they ever so base,
are still to be obeyed; for the manners of a court will always have
an influence over the morals of a people. A Republican government
hath more true grandeur in it than a Kingly one. On the part of the
public it is more consistent with freemen to appoint their rulers
than to have them born; and on the part of those who preside, it is
far nobler to be a ruler by the choice of the people, than a King by
the chance of birth. Every honest Delegate is more than a Monarch.
Disorders will unavoidably happen in all states, but monarchical
governments are the most subject thereto, because the balance hangs
uneven. "Nineteen rebellions and eight civil wars in England
since the conquest. "Whatever commotions are produced in
Republican states, are not produced by a Republican spirit, but by
those who seek to extinguish it. A Republican state cannot produce
its own destruction, it can only suffer it. No nation of people, in
their true senses, when seriously reflecting on the rank which God
hath given them, and the reasoning faculties he hath blessed them
with, would ever, of their own consent, give any one man a negative
power over the whole: No man since the fall hath ever been equal to
the trust, wherefore 'tis insanity in us to entrust them with it;
and in this sense, all those who have had it have done us right by
abusing us into reason. Nature seems sometimes to laugh at mankind,
by giving them so many fools for Kings; at other times, she punishes
their folly by giving them tyrants; but England must have offended
highly to be curst with both in one. Rousseau proposed a plan for
establishing a perpetual European peace; which was, for every State
in Europe to send Ambassadors to form a General Council, and when
any difference happened between any two nations, to refer the matter
to arbitration instead of going to arms. This would be forming a
kind of European Republic: But the proud and plundering spirit of
Kings hath not peace for its object. They look not at the good of
mankind. They set not out upon that plan: And if the history of the
Creation and the history of Kings be compared together the result
will be this - that God hath made a world, and Kings have robbed him
of it.
But that which sufficiently establishes the Republican mode of
government, in preference to a Kingly one, even when all other
arguments are left out, is this simple truth, that all men are
Republicans by nature, and Royalists only by fashion. And this is
fully proved by that passionate adoration which all men shew to that
great and almost only remaining bulwark of natural rights, trial by
juries, which is founded on a pure Republican basis. Here the power
of Kings is shut out. No Royal negative can enter this Court. The
Jury, which is here supreme, is a Republic, a body of Judges chosen
from among the people.
The charter which secures this freedom in England, was formed, not
in the senate, but in the field; and insisted on by the people, not
granted by the crown; the crown in that instance granted nothing,
but only renounced its former tyrannies, and bound itself over to
its future good behaviour. It was the compromise, by which the
wearer of it made his peace with the people, and the condition on
which he was suffered to reign.
Here ends my reply to all the letters which have at present
appeared under the signature of Cato, being at this time seven in
number. I have made no particular remarks on his last two, which
treat only of the mode of government, but answered them generally.
In one place I observe, he accuses the writer of Common Sense
with inconsistency in having declared, "That no man was a
warmer wisher for reconciliation than himself, before the fatal 19th
of April, 1775" 1 ; "that is," (says Cato)
reconciliation to monarchical government." To which I reply
that war ought to be no man's wish, neither ought any man to perplex
a state, already formed, with his private opinions; "the mode
of government being a proper consideration for those countries"
only "which have their governments yet to form." (Common
Sense). On a review of the ground which I have gone over in
Cato's letters, (exclusive of what I have omitted) I find the
following material charges against him:
First. He hath accused the Committee with crimes generally; stated
none, nor proved, nor attempted to prove any.
N. B. The pretence of charging the acts of a body of men on
individuals, is too slender to be admitted.?
Secondly. He hath falsely complained to the public of the restraint
of the press.
Thirdly. He hath wickedly asserted that "gleams of
reconciliation hath lately broken in upon us," thereby grossly
deceiving the people.
Fourthly. He hath insinuated, as if he wished the public to
believe, that we had received "the utmost assurance of having
all our grievances redressed, and an ample security against any
future violation of our just rights."
Fifthly. He hath spread false alarms of calling in foreign troops.
Sixthly. He hath turned the scripture into a jest. Ez. 35.
These falsehoods, if uncontradicted, might have passed for truths,
and the minds of persons remote from better intelligence might have
been greatly embarrassed thereby. Let our opinions be what they
will, truth as to facts should be strictly adhered to. It was this
affecting consideration that drew out the Forester (a perfect
volunteer) to the painful task of writing three long letters, and
occasioned to the public the trouble of reading them.
Having for the present closed my correspondence with Cato, I shall
conclude this letter with a well meant affectionate address
To the People.
It is not a time to trifle. Men, who know they deserve nothing from
their country, and whose hope is on the arm that hath fought to
enslave ye, may hold out to you, as Cato hath done, the false light
of reconciliation. There is no such thing. 'Tis gone! 'Tis past! The
grave hath parted us - and death, in the persons of the slain, hath
cut the thread of life between Britain and America.
Conquest, and not reconciliation is the plan of Britain. But
admitting even the last hope of the Tories to happen, which is, that
our enemies after a long succession of losses, wearied and disabled,
should despairingly throw down their arms and propose a re-union; in
that case, what is to be done? Are defeated and disappointed tyrants
to be considered like mistaken and converted friends? Or would it be
right, to receive those for Governors, who, had they been
conquerors, would have hung us up for traitors? Certainly not.
Reject the offer then, and propose another; which is, we will make
peace with you as with enemies, but we will never re-unite with you
as friends. This effected, and ye secure to yourselves the pleasing
prospect of an eternal peace. America, remote from all the wrangling
world, may live at ease. Bounded by the ocean, and backed by the
wilderness, who hath she to fear, but her GOD?
Be not deceived. It is not a little that is at stake.
Reconciliation will not now go down, even if it were offered. 'Tis a
dangerous question; for the eyes of all men begin to open. There is
now no secret in the matter; there ought to be none. It is a case
that concerns every man, and every man ought to lay it to heart. He
that is here and he that was born here are alike concerned. It is
needless, too, to split the business into a thousand parts, and
perplex it with endless and fruitless investigations, in the manner
that a writer signed a
Common Man hath done. This unparalleled contention of
nations is not to be settled like a schoolboy's task of pounds,
shillings, pence, and fractions. That writer, though he may mean
well, is strangely below the mark: for the first and great question,
and that which involves every other in it, and from which every
other will flow, is happiness. Can this continent be happy under the
government of Great Britain or not? Secondly, Can she be happy under
a government of our own? To live beneath the authority of those whom
we cannot love, is misery, slavery, or what name you please. In that
case, there will never be peace. Security will be a thing unknown,
because a treacherous friend in power is the most dangerous of
enemies. The answer to the second question, Can America be happy
under a government of her own, is short and simple, viz. As happy as
she please; she hath a blank sheet to write upon. Put it not off too
long.?
Painful as the task of speaking truth must sometimes be, yet I
cannot avoid giving the following hint, because much, nay almost
every thing depends upon it; and that is, a thorough knowledge of
the persons whom we trust. It is the duty of the public, at this
time, to scrutinize closely into the conduct of their Committee
Members, Members of Assembly, and Delegates in Congress; to know
what they do, and their motives for so doing. Without doing this, we
shall never know who to confide in; but shall constantly mistake
friends for enemies, and enemies for friends, till in the confusion
of persons we sacrifice the cause. I am led to this reflexion by the
following circumstance. That the Gentleman to whom the unwise and
arbitrary instructions to the Delegates of this province owe their
being, and who hath bestowed all his power to support them, is said
to be the same person who, when the ships now on the stocks were
wanting timber, refused to sell it, and thus by preventing our
strength to cry out of our insufficiency. - But his hour of fame is
past - he is hastening to his political exit.
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