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Character of an Independent Whig—‘Cato’ and Bernard Mandeville

2003; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0191-6599(03)00022-6

1873-541X

Annie Mitchell,

American History and Culture

Abstract John Trenchard's and Thomas Gordon's ‘Cato’ has generally been seen by historians as the embodiment of neo-Harringtonianism and the polar opposite of Bernard Mandeville's thought. This paper addresses that misreading and places Trenchard and Gordon within a tradition of liberal republican political thought, rather than a civic humanist or neo-roman tradition. It examines the relationship between the political, philosophical and religious beliefs of Trenchard and Gordon and those of Mandeville, arguing that they shared a common framework with respect to the problems of politics. Notes 1 See J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton and Chichester, 1975), especially chapters 12, 13 and 14. 2 See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 467–475. 3 See Joyce Appleby, ‘The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology’, in Liberals, and Republicanism, in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 161–187; also Isaac Kramnick, ‘Republican Revisionism Revisited’, The American Historical Review, 87 (1982), pp. 629–664. 4 See J. Goodale, ‘J.G.A. Pocock's Neo-Harringtonians: A Reconsideration’, History of Political Thought, I (1980), pp. 237–259; Ronald Hamowy, ‘Cato's Letters, John Locke and the Republican Paradigm’, History of Political Thought, XI (1990), pp. 273–294; Marie McMahon, The Radical Whigs, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (Lanham, 1990); and T.L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago, 1988). Kramnick, while categorising Trenchard and Gordon as proponents of a politics of nostalgia, has also acknowledged that they drew heavily on Locke. See Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle (Cambridge, Mass.,1968), p. 249. 5 See S.M. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine (Durham, 1990); Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago, 1988); and Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, Classical Republicanism and the Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1992). 6 For republican glosses on Hobbes see Quentin Skinner, ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought’, The Historical Journal, IX (1966), pp. 286–317; and Glen Burgess, ‘Contexts for the Writing and Publication of Hobbes's Leviathan’, History of Political Thought, XI (1990), pp. 675–702. 7 See Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998); also ‘The republican ideal of political liberty’, Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 293–309, especially, p. 306. 8 See, for example, Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, pp. 201–206: ‘Mandeville may also be read in the intellectual context of his own age as an important formulator of new values for post-Revolution England…[his] achievement was the expression of values that supplanted humanism, appropriate for the emerging social structure.’ Whereas, Kramnick goes on to argue, ‘one of the overriding themes of Cato's Letters is a rejection of the new economic order.’ See also J.A.W Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property (Montreal, 1983), pp. 116–119. 9 H.T. Dickinson, ‘Bernard Mandeville: An ‘independent Whig’’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, CLII (1976), pp. 559–570, at p. 565. 10 Goldsmith is referring to the fact that Trenchard and Gordon styled themselves ‘independent Whigs’ and collaborated on the similarly entitled and widely read periodical, The Independent Whig. See M.M. Goldsmith Private Vices, Public Benefits (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 104, 122. It should become clear during the course of this essay that Trenchard and Gordon were emphatically not ‘protagonists of virtue and opposition’. 11 Rudolph Dekker, “Private Vices, Public Virtues” Revisited: The Dutch Background of Bernard Mandeville’, trans. G. T. Moran, History of European Ideas, 14 (1992), pp. 481–98, p. 495. 12 Neither Dickinson or Goldsmith, nor indeed Kramnick, suggests that Mandeville was not a supporter of William. As Goldsmith notes, Mandeville's first known English publication, The Pamphleteers, was a defence of William, in verse form, against the carping of those who belittled his achievements. In the poem Mandeville celebrated William's personal virtues and a life spent in opposing French tyranny. See Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits, p. 79. 13 See Bernard Mandeville, An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour and the Usefulness of Christianity in War (London, 1732), p. 98. Gordon also regarded Calvinism to be as dangerous as Catholicism in that it sanctioned resistance to an ungodly government, defined as one which failed to suppress and expunge heresy within its borders. See Thomas Gordon, The Works of Tacitus, 2 vols. (London, 1728), p. 132. See also Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, ed. R. Hamowy, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1995), II, no. 131, pp. 907–908. 14 So whilst Mandeville's Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness (London, 1720) might be seen as a propaganda piece for George I's Whig government, and includes a reference to the ‘Genius of William the Third’, equally it is a restatement of Arminian beliefs: a rejection of predestination and a plea for religious tolerance and less preoccupation with outward forms of worship. 15 Mandeville was a sceptic in that he believed there was no ‘ultimate good’, no determining principle discoverable to human reason which would show men how to live their lives. For him, this meant that men should, therefore, be allowed to follow whatever route to happiness best suited them. See Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F.B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1995), I, pp. 330–331; also I, p. 244. For the argument that men are differently motivated and that there is no single good life for all, see The Female Tatler, 15th, 20th and 24th March 1720. The life of a country gentleman and that of a money-driven merchant are, Mandeville suggests, equally valid. 16 [Philip Skelton] Deism Revealed, or the Attack on Christianity Candidly Reviewed In its real MERITS, 2 vols. (London, 1751), II, p. 312. 17 Nathaniel Mist, ed., A Collection of Miscellany Letters Selected out of Mist's Weekly Journal, 4 vols. (London, 1722–1727) vol. 2, no. XXXIII, p. 95. Similarly, yet another critic condemned the ‘general Contempt of our Holy Religion, and Disobedience of the People to Superiors’ inspired by ‘Cato’ and argued that principles were ‘but the Grey Hairs of old Heresies and Seditions of Buchanan or Hobs, new vampt up in Bangorian or Catonick Style’, [John Gaynam] Cato's Principles of Self-Preservation, and Publick Liberty (London, 1722), pp. 5–6. 18 Whether or not scholars of the history of ideas consider Locke a materialist philosopher, and indeed whether or not Locke would have seen himself in such terms, this is how Trenchard and Gordon saw him. They linked Locke with Hobbes and viewed both as materialists. Critics of Trenchard and Gordon were of the same opinion and damned the authors of Cato's Letters and The Independent Whig by association by ranking them with Hobbes and Locke. See Cato's Letters, II, no. 116, p. 808; also, for example, William Carroll, A Dissertation Upon the Tenth Chapter of the Fourth Book of Mr. Locke's Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (London, 1706), pp. ii, 289. 19 William Carroll, Spinoza Reviv’d (London, 1709), p. 102. 20 Ibid., p. 41. 21 Gordon refers to Pieter de la Court's The True Interest of Holland in the St. James's Journal, 13 April 1723. The True Interest was published in English translation in 1704; a translation of Fables, Moral and Political had already appeared in 1703. 22 They were anxious, like Hobbes, that the national Church hierarchy should not rival the power of the secular authority. However, they would have rejected his view that men should conform to the religion sanctioned by the state. 23 Like beasts men, Pieter de la Court argued, were machines but they differed in that they possessed a soul. All men, de la Court insisted, had a duty to lead a life that benefited the general welfare. Men failed in this, however, because they were ruled by self-love. See Fables, Moral and Political, with Large Explications, 2 vols. (London, 1703), passim. 24 Political Discourses, quoted by Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and Spinoza’, The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. J.H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 530–557, at p. 548. The following discussion of the de la Courts draws on the above text, pp. 547–550, and Eco O.G. Haitsma Mulier's The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Assen: Van Gorcum and Comp., 1980), pp. 120–169. 25 Political Discourses, quoted in ‘Hobbes and Spinoza’, p. 548. 26 Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland (London, 1702), p. 2. 27 Pieter de la Court argued: ‘[F]or that Men, when they come to be vested with the Power of the Government, cannot lay aside this natural humane Affection [self-love], it evidently follows that that is a good Form of Government, where those who sit at the Helm cannot promote their own Interest and Advantage unless they take care to advance the publick utility; nor avoid their particular ills, but in avoiding likewise those of the publick.’, Fables, Moral and Political, I, p. 84. 28 Ibid., I, p. 225. 29 Ibid., I, p. 194. 30 Ibid., I, p. 277. 31 F.B. Kaye notes Mandeville's similar pairing of religious and commercial freedom. See Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F.B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1988), I, p. xcix. 32 See Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits, p. 142. Goldsmith includes Tacitus as one of the ancient writers frequently invoked for this purpose by exponents of the ‘“civic humanist” ideology’. Also see Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1969), p. 56. Bailyn argues the interpretative discourses prefacing Gordon's translations of Sallust and Tacitus ‘were “country” tracts as flamboyant as his periodical pieces’. This is a somewhat odd analysis since the translations were published at a time when Gordon had supposedly sold his services to the Whig administration. Vol. I of his Tacitus was dedicated to Walpole. See A. Mitchell's unpublished doctoral thesis, The Character of an Independent Whig (London, 2002), chapter 7, for a fuller discussion of Gordon's use of Tacitus. 33 Thomas Gordon, The Works of Sallust Translated into English with Political Discourses upon that Author to which is added a Translation of Cicero's Four Orations Against Catiline (London, 1754), p. 29. Similarly, Trenchard referred to the Dutch Republic, rather than Rome or Athens, as ‘the most virtuous and flourishing state which ever yet appeared in the world… a state which, ever since its institution, has been the champion of publick liberty’, Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 85, p. 618. 34 See Richard Tuck, ‘Grotius and Selden’, The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, pp. 499–529, esp. pp. 500–501, 510–511. 35 Gordon, The Works of Sallust, p. 150. 36 See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 133, pp. 919–921 and Mandeville, ‘An Essay on Charity, and Charity-Schools’, The Fable of the Bees, I, pp. 254–322, especially 284, 309, 310. 37 The Flying Post, 26 April 1715, quoted in M.G. Jones The Charity School Movement (London, 1964), pp. 112–113. 38 See ibid., pp. 113–114. 39 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, p. 409. 40 Numbered 120, 129, 130 and 133 in the Liberty Fund edition of Cato's Letters. 41 Trenchard and Gordon's main target was Frances Atterbury. 42 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 129, p. 895. No. 129 was penned by Gordon but Trenchard had argued in similar vein in the previous letter, no. 128, pp. 887–888. 43 See Kaye's comments, The Fable of the Bees, I, p. 327. As Gunn notes of the quarrel between Macclesfield and Walpole: ‘This left Mandeville in the uncomfortable situation of a pro-administration Whig who may have felt no admiration for the most powerful Whig.’, Beyond Liberty and Property, p. 105. 44 See W.A. Speck, ‘Bernard Mandeville and the Middlesex Grand Jury’, Eighteenth Century Studies, XI (1978), pp. 362–374. Speck's argument that the Jurors proceeded against Trenchard in order to remove the stigma of Jacobitism from themselves and his portrayal of Trenchard as a Country Whig fails to make sense. The numbers of Cato's Letters which formed the subject of the prosecution condemned Jacobitism and expressed support for the administration. It is difficult to see how by condemning the authors of such opinions the Jury would have cleared itself from suspicion of Jacobitism. It would surely have produced the opposite effect. 45 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, p. 385. 46 Ibid., I, p. 397. As Kaye notes, the use of the epithet ‘Catiline’ by the author of the Letter to Lord C. was probably inspired by a pamphlet written against Cato's Letters, entitled The Censor Censur’d: or, Cato Turn’d Catiline. Mandeville responded to both Lord C's letter and the presentment of the Middlesex Grand Jury in his ‘A Vindication of the Book’. 47 See, for example, The British Journal, 16 March 1722. 48 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 39, p. 276. 49 See, for example, William Barnes, Charity and Charity Schools defended (London, 1727); John Denne, A Sermon preached at St. Sepulchre's Church, May 6th 1736 … Being the time of the yearly meeting of the children education in the charity-schools, in and about the cities of London and Westminster (London, 1736); and Thomas Secker, A Sermon preached … May 5 1743, being the time of the yearly meeting of the… Charity School in… London and Westminster (London, 1743). 50 Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property, p. 108. Goldsmith's views, which accord with those of Gunn in this matter, have already been cited. 51 Even so, Cato's Letters are replete with statements, such as that quoted in the preceding paragraph, which are as provocative as anything written by Mandeville. 52 Thomas Gordon, The Humourist (London, 1725), pp. 114–115. 53 P.B. Anderson draws attention to the fact that Gordon reused some of his material from Pasquin in The Humourist. See ‘Cato's Obscure Counterpart in The British Journal 1722–1725’, Studies in Philology, XXXIV (1937), pp. 412–428, at p. 425; see also McMahon, The Radical Whigs, p. 170. 54 Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property, p. 109. 55 See Anon., An Historical View of the Principles, Characters, Persons, etc. of the Political Writers of Great Britain (London, 1740), pp. 16–17. 56 See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 41, p. 283 for Gordon's judgement on Galbo. 57 See Thomas Gordon, Pasquin (London, 28th November 1722–26th March 1724), no. 56, 13 August 1723; Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 41, p. 283; and William Arnall, Clodius and Cicero (London, 1727), pp. 8, 26, 28. Gordon may well have been influenced by Mandeville but it is also likely that similar influences shaped the work of both men. At his satiric best Gordon does read remarkably like Mandeville but he lacks his honesty, imagination and spark of originality. P.B. Anderson similarly mistook ‘Criton’, the pseudonym Gordon adopted in The British Journal, for Mandeville. See Anderson, ‘Cato's Obscure Counterpart’, pp. 412–428. 58 See ‘Advertisement to the Reader’, Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, p. 957. Gordon states in the Advertisement that it had been his intention, and that of Trenchard before his death, to publish occasional papers, principally on religious subjects but also to include several on political matters. In fulfilment of that aim Gordon wrote the six ‘Criton’ letters, later subjoined to Cato's Letters because he considered their political nature made them naturally part of that collection. The Advertisement also states that Gordon intends to publish the papers on religious matters as a third volume of The Independent Whig. As McMahon points out, this strongly suggests Gordon continued to contribute to The British Journal under the name of ‘Criton’ up until June 1724, evidence which McMahon says is usually overlooked by scholars. See McMahon, The Radical Whigs, p. 97. However, quite apart from Gordon's testimony the subject matter of the ‘Criton’ letters lends credence to the argument that he was the author. 59 During the time ‘Cato’ was in residence at The British Journal, ‘Diogenes’ made an appearance on ten occasions, nine of these letters were subsequently claimed for ‘Cato’ by Gordon and published as part of complete editions of the Letters. 60 Anderson, ‘Cato's Obscure Counterpart’, p. 414. 61 G.S. Vichert, however, refutes Anderson's claim that ‘Pilanthropus’ was a pseudonym used by Mandeville. See Vichert's unpublished doctoral thesis, A Critical Study of the English Works of Bernard Mandeville (London, 1964), p. 327. 62 Anderson, ‘Cato's Obscure Counterpart’, p. 414. 63 See Mitchell, The Character of an Independent Whig, chapter 6, for a discussion of the influence of the French moralistes and Bayle on both Mandeville and Gordon. For Gordon's references to Bayle in Cato's Letters see I, preface, p.28; no. 25, p. 183; no. 27, pp. 195–196; no. 44, pp. 298–299, 301–305; no. 52, p. 349. 64 See Gordon, Tacitus, I, p. 23 and Anderson, ‘Cato's Obscure Counterpart’, 417. 65 The image he conjures up is that of an eighteenth century version of the WWII British Homeguard, a ‘Dad's Army’ militia. See Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, pp. 119–120. 66 See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 125, pp. 867–868 and no. 128, pp. 887–888. 67 See The British Journal, 9 November 1723. 68 In the early eighteenth century it was a ‘common modern practice’ for a newspaper writer to pen letters to himself under a different pseudonym. See Frances Hutcheson, On Human Nature, ed. Thomas Mautner (Cambridge, 1993), Appendix 15, p. 163. 69 The British Journal, 30 May 1724. 70 See, for example, Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, nos. 109, 110, 11, 15, 116, 122 and 124. 71 As already indicated, Pocock, Kramnick, Goldsmith and Gunn all subscribe to this interpretation. It has to be restated that these confusions relate to a period prior to what is seen in the civic humanist analysis as Gordon's fall from grace. See, for example, Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property, p. 23; and Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 467–475 and ‘Virtue and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, III (1972), pp. 119–134. 72 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 108, pp. 761–762. The letter is written by Trenchard. For Mandeville's view see The Fable of the Bees, I, p. 244. 73 Ibid., I, no. 67, pp. 472–473. The author of this letter is Trenchard. For Mandeville's anti-nostalgic analysis of the wide-spread material benefits of modernity compared to the drudgery endured by the majority of men in the past, see Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, pp. 169–172. For comparison with Adam Smith see, for example, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols. (London, 1791), II, pp. 82, 88; III, 42–43, 183–192. 74 See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 104, pp. 735–736, and nos. 116 and 122; Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, II, pp. 174, 139–140. 75 See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 40, p. 278. 76 See Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, pp 346–347; II, pp. 129–137. 77 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 33, p. 238. 78 Ibid., I, no. 31, p. 222. Also see II, no. 108, p. 762. In this, Trenchard and Gordon were more Harringtonian than neo-Harringtonian. 79 Ibid., I, no. 40, p. 282. See also I, no. 33 and Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, II, pp. 323, 335. 80 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, pp. 41–57. 81 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, I, no. 39, p. 276. 82 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, p. 369. 83 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, no. 105, p. 742.