'Monsters as They Are, What Would You Do With Them?'

The authors of 'Cato's Letters' condemn a political society that permits treason to the constitution to go unpunished

The ship “American Commonwealth” sails for ports of the past, where the intelligence of history illuminates the errors and follies of our ways

Six weeks ago American Commonwealth weighed anchor from Philadelphia, crossing the Atlantic to London. Arriving at the capital in late November 1720, six years after the coronation of King George I, Protestant limited monarch, we merry travelers are keenly aware that Parliamentary supremacy—and the liberty it safeguards—is under threat from the “Old Pretender” and his militant Catholic followers, known as Jacobites.

The Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart, is the son of the late James II, divine-rights monarch deposed for his tyranny by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James II is dead, but his son, living in exile in Rome, intends to restore Catholic absolutism in Great Britain whenever conditions of corruption, conspiracy, and crisis sufficiently ripen the island for invasion.

The Old Pretender will not act alone. The Pope, Catholic France, Catholic Spain, and legions of Jacobites, both within and without the island of Great Britain, will back him.

Upon disembarking, we also learn that a financial corruption scandal of monumental proportions—the South Sea Bubble—has recently plunged the economy into crisis, triggering widespread bankruptcies and freezes in the credit market.

Dozens of government officials and members of Parliament are implicated in the profiteering that led to the collapse of the company, fueling public outrage and urgent calls for justice to restore the integrity of free government.

Passion for punishment, Cato asserts, is the saving grace of a republic

Button's Coffee House

At Button's Coffee House, a famed intellectual hub in Covent Garden, we encounter lively chatter about a new series of weekly letters published in the London Journal under the pseudonym “Cato,” named for the legendary defender of the Roman Republic who died fighting Caesar’s tyranny.

By late November, the London Journal has released three letters to broad acclaim. The latest installment, dated November 19, is readily on hand at Button’s.

In the letters, the great Cato delivers blistering condemnations of the financial and governmental corruption unearthed by the South Sea Bubble, warning that without swift and merciless punishment of the “traitors,” dangerous precedents will be set.

Cato proclaims a first rule of liberty: political crimes must be punished.

“Impunity,” he warns, spreads corruption—and corruption nourishes tyranny.

‘Crocodiles and Cannibals’

In the pages of the London Journal, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the writers of Cato's Letters, burn with indignation at the treachery of the directors of the South Sea Company and the parliamentarians who abetted their crooked scheme.

And that is precisely the point. In a healthy republic, citizens must channel their “anger” and “spirit of jealousy and revenge” over crimes against the public into swift punishment commensurate with both the nature of the crime and the rank of the political office committing it.

In their political philosophy, informed by the rise and fall of governments in Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Venice, punishment of high crimes and misdemeanors saves lives, limbs, and liberty—whereas "impunity" casts them into the jaws of tyranny.

Regarding the company directors and the government officials who perpetuated the South Sea scandal—“crocodiles and cannibals” and “monsters,” all of them—Trenchard and Gordon prescribe severe, everlasting punishment:

Monsters as they are, what would you do with them? The answer is short and at hand, hang them; for, whatever they deserve, I would have no new tortures invented, nor any new death devised. In this, I think, I shew moderation; let them only be hanged, but hanged speedily. As to their wealth, as it is the manifest plunder of the people, let it be restored to the people, and let the publick be their heirs. [See ‘Trigger Warning’ at the bottom of the page]

‘Cato’s Letters’ is the singular masterwork in the canon of Western history that, standing alone, holds the power to rescue threatened democracies and republics around the world today—provided that citizens absorb their teachings into mind and marrow.

Read more: Announcing a Voyage of Historic Discovery

Passion for punishment, the authors promise, is the saving grace of a republic:

Jealousy and revenge, in a whole people, when they are abused, are laudable and politick virtues; without which they will never thrive, never be esteemed. How far they are to carry their resentments, I do not pronounce: The measures of it must be determined by circumstances; but still keen resentment ought to be shewn, and some punishment, or punishments, inflicted.

When the dignity or interest of a nation is at stake, mercy may be cruelty.

Mercy may be cruelty: By this shorthand, the Enlightenment thinkers caution that political corruption met with impunity spawns the ultimate cruelty of tyranny.

The emotions of “jealousy and revenge,” therefore, must spirit a nation to apprehend, punish, and make a public example of traitors. Whigs and Tories alike must embrace this hallowed principle:

For if any crimes against the publick may be committed with impunity, men will be tempted to commit the greatest of all; I mean, that of making themselves masters of the state; and where liberty ends in servitude, it is owing to this neglect.

‘Complaining Does Not Mend the Matter’

One example of political impunity gone violently awry, the authors attest, is that granted to intemperate Roman rulers Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelia Sulla, who preceded Julius Caesar:

Caesar thought that he might do what he had seen Marius and Sulla do before him, and so enslaved his country: Whereas, had they been hanged, he would, perhaps, never have attempted it. [See ‘Trigger Warning’ at the bottom of the page]

All this explains why we are so fortunate today to grasp the principle that an enlightened republic must never extend clemency to traitors to the constitution.

Instead, there exists a “salutary method,” Trenchard and Gordon say, to preserve freedom and liberty. That method is to bring traitors to justice, ridding government of their presence:

If this mighty, this destructive guilt, were to find impunity, nothing remains, but that every villain of a daring and avaricious spirit may grow a great rogue, in order to be a great man. When a people can no longer expect redress of publick and heavy evils, nor satisfaction for publick and bitter injuries, hideous is the prospect which they have before them.

Lucky are we, merry travelers, to know better by the light of history.

“American Commonwealth” sails for the past, where discover the errors and follies of our ways

Won’t you buy a ticket and come aboard?

Eli Merritt is a psychiatrist and historian who writes about the origins of our present political discontents and solutions to them. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications.

He writes American Commonwealth and is the author or editor of the books “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution,” “Demagogue in the White House: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump,” and “How to Save Democracy: Advice and Inspiration from 95 World Leaders”

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Trigger Warning

My essays convey history, not prescriptions for means of punishment in 21st century. While I do heartily endorse the relentless execution of the rule of law, I equally oppose the execution of criminals—by hanging or any other violent means.

Sources

• Cato’s Letters, No. 1-3

• 1688: The First Modern Revolution, by Steve Pincus