A m e r i c a n a 48 “A Profound Influence On Revolutionary Ideology”: Major 1733 Edition Of Trenchard And Gordon’s Cato’s Letters 63. GORDON, Thomas and TRENCHARD, John. Cato’s Letters; Or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects. London, 1733. Four volumes. Small octavo, contemporary full brown calf. $8500. 1733 third edition of Trenchard and Gordon’s famed essays, first issued in 1724, a major influence on the American Revolution—“ranked with the treatises of Locke as the most authoritative statement on the nature of political liberty and above Locke as an exposition of the social sources of the threats it faced” (Bailyn)—a direct and important influence on many of the founding fathers. “Trenchard and Gordon were the most important disseminators of ideas to Americans in the pre-revolutionary generations” (Nash, Urban Crucible, 348). They first issued their “Cato’s Letters” in the London Journal and British Journal from November 1720 through December 1723. “It was Trenchard and Gordon who first gave unreserved endorsement to free speech as being indispensable to ‘Liberty, Property, true Religion, Arts, Sciences, Learning, [and] Knowledge’” (McDonald, 47). The Cato essays “were a classic for many Americans” (Maier, 27). Their influence is palpable in the rhetoric of conspiracy in the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson owned the 1748 edition), the restrictions on federal power and the concept of individual rights in the Articles of Confederation and Constitution. In the course of 18th-century American political development, they were “the most important… spokesmen for extreme libertarianism” (Bailyn, 35-44), and Cato’s Letters “had a profound impact on Revolutionary ideology” (Library of Congress 3922). Third edition, “carefully corrected.” The first complete volume of Cato essays appeared soon after Trenchard’s death in December 1723, and all of the early editions are rare. ESTC 138373. Early owner ink signature to title pages. Bookplate. Short wormtracks to several interior leaves in Volume III, chiefly marginal; text generally clean, expert restoration to contemporary calf bindings. A nicely refurbished set of this scarce and desirable early edition. AMERICANA
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