The funny thing, in the realm of history, when one attempts to trace how and why a particular event took place – or for what reasons a particular historical actor behaved a certain way – is that the resulting investigation can often lead one much further afield than might initially have seemed likely. Arguably, this hold true in terms of subject matter as well as it does of time and place. In order to understand what brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, one might conceivably find oneself studying the fall of the Roman Republic. In attempting to investigate the founding of the Dutch Republic in the late 16th century, a person might very easily find their attention gravitating towards the life and ambitions of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), a man who died over one hundred years prior. In this respect, the American Revolution is no different from most other historical events. While its immediate causes are fairly obvious, and easy enough to trace, close attention can and will produce surprising results. The Founding Generation, it’s true, was moved to action in large part by harsh tax imperial policies, a clumsy British reaction to various contemporary economic and political considerations, the lasting legacy of 17th century Whig political philosophy, and the lingering effects of the recently-concluded Seven Years War (1754-1763). But there was also a great deal more at work than just these primary factors alone. The way that successive British governments in the 1760s and 1770s responded to American calls for redress may well have had a great deal to do with the influence of late 18th century radical politics in Britain proper. Likewise, the behavior of colonists in contemporary New England towards British tax and commerce laws might be understood in the completest sense though a study of confessional politics in mid-17th century Britain, the Puritan Migration (1620-1640), and the English Civil War (1642-1651).
This revelation brings us, as it
must, to a subject which has appeared many times in these pages but has yet to
be discussed at length. Namely, a play written by the English essayist, poet,
and statesman Joseph Addison (1672-1719) entitled, Cato, a Tragedy
(1712). On its surface, no doubt, it would appear to have very little to do with
the founding of the American republic. It was written by an Englishman, after
all, published over sixty years before the Thirteen Colonies declared their
independence from Great Britain, and takes as its subject matter the life and
death of an ancient Roman orator and statesman. Bear in mind certain notable
facts, however, and one might reasonably be given to elevate its significance.
At the time of its publication, for one thing, it was very popular in Great
Britain and its various imperial possessions. In 1749 it became a part of the
inter-familial struggle between George II (1683-1760) and his son, Frederick,
Prince of Wales (1707-1751) when the latter staged a production in order to
make clear to his future subjects that he was a friend of English liberty as
opposed to the “Germanic tyranny” of his father. Four of Frederick’s children
starred in that production, among them the future George III (1738-1820). By
the 1770s, the play was still much-read and much-admired in the American
colonies, with figures as illustrious as Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Nathan Hale
(1755-1776), and George Washington (1732-1799) freely quoting or paraphrasing
from its text in their speeches and correspondence. Hale’s famous last words, "I
only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," bear a
striking resemblance to a passage from Act IV, Scene 4, for example. And
Washington’s praise of Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) – “It is not in the power of
any man to command success; but you have done more—you have deserved it” – was
clearly intended to echo a similarly-phrased line from Act I, Scene 2.
Washington supposedly had the play performed for his men at Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania in order to lift their spirits during the famously brutal winter
of 1777-1778. It was even quoted by conservative Whig statesman Edmund Burke in
his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and enjoyed a
celebrated revival in London in 1816.
The
questions which most obviously arise from all of this should be fairly obvious.
How was it have possible that a play about a Roman orator written by an
Englishman in 1712 became variously the favorite of liberal British royalty in
the 1740s, radical American revolutionaries in the 1770s, and conservative
British statesmen in the 1790s? Who was Joseph Addison? What was this thing he
created, and how did it become so enduringly influential? The notion of its
influence would seem of particular interests given that the play has since been
almost entirely forgotten. Indeed, its existence at this stage has largely been
boiled down to a minor point of reference. It was a favorite of Washington; it
was paraphrased by Hale. Knowing these things, however, still begs the question
of why. Why was George Washington so fond of this tragedy? What did he see in it
that so captured his heart? And to what extent – if any – did it influence his
thinking? This might seem, on first blush, like a rather silly line of inquiry;
a bit like asking how Napoleon’s taste in fiction impacted his decision to lead
the Grande Armée into Russia. But clearly, as the examples cited above
make manifest, Cato not infrequently had an outsized effect on very
important people. If the man who believed he was soon to become King of Great
Britain and Ireland thought to use it to draw a line between himself and his
supposedly tyrannical father, then there must be something there beyond pretty
words and touching scenes.
The best place to begin such an
inquiry, of course, is with how and why the subject in question came to be.
Answering how is simple enough: as mentioned previously, it was written by
Joseph Addison and publish in 1712. As to why, well…that gets to be a bit more
complicated. Notwithstanding the political attitudes of some of Cato’s
most famous admirers, Addison’s life was not exactly that of a radical
republican provocateur. The eldest child of Anglican clergyman and scholar
Lancelot Addison (1632-1703), his employment and experiences up to the year
1712 seemed to place him very much in the mainstream of the contemporary Whig
movement’s cultural and political discourse. He was very well educated, first at
the Charterhouse School in Surrey and then at Queen’s College, Oxford. He
excelled in the classics, became a fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and
began publishing original works of poetry and translations of Latin texts at
the beginning of the 1690s. And at about the turn of the 18th
century he was given a pension in recognition of his burgeoning literary career
by two of the most powerful Whig statesmen in Britain – Lord Somers (1651-1716)
and the Earl of Halifax (1661-1715) – so that he might travel and study in
Europe while continuing to write. While this proved, in the immediate, to be a
fruitful proposition, it came to an abrupt end in 1702 when, upon the death of
William III (1650-1702), Addison’s patrons lost their positions in government
and his income promptly evaporated.
Failing to find employment for the full
year that followed his return to Britain in 1703, he managed once again to
parlay his literary abilities into an award of patronage in 1704 when the Lord
Treasurer, the Earl of Godolphin (1645-1712) commissioned him to write a poem
commemorating Britain’s victory over the French at the recent Battle of
Blenheim. So pleased was the government with the resulting effort – entitled The
Campaign – that Addison was appointed to the position of Commissioner of
Appeals. But while his entry into politics came about through his service to a
Tory government, his prior patronage by notable Whig statesmen seemed to exert
the more lasting influence on his personal convictions. When the Whigs came to
power in 1705, he accordingly allied himself with that faction and was swiftly
elevated to the office of Under-Secretary of State. Shortly thereafter he
accompanied his former patron Halifax on a diplomatic mission to the German
state of Hanover, and in 1708 he was elected for the first time as a Member of
Parliament for the “rotten borough” of Lostwithiel thanks to the sponsorship of
fellow Whig Lord Edgcumbe (1680-1758). In that same year he became Chief
Secretary for Ireland under the new Lord Lieutenant, the Marquess of Wharton
(1648-1715), and in 1709 – at Wharton’s urging and with his aid – he was
elected as Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons for the riding of
Cavan Borough. The following year, in 1710, he traded Lostwithiel in Cornwall
for Malmesbury in Wiltshire, the seat he would hold until his passing in 1719.
Throughout this period, despite the
seemingly whirlwind pace of these political activities, Addison maintained his
status as a man of letters though his membership in the so-called “Kit-Cat
Club” and via a renewed friendship with former Charterhouse school-mate Richard
Steele (1772-1729). The former was an association of Whig statesmen and
literary figures who met at a tavern in the London district of Holborn for the
purpose of cultivating personal and political relationships as well as seeking
ways to promote the major Whig objectives of the day – i.e. a strong
Parliament, a limited monarchy, and a Protestant succession to the throne. The
latter, Steele, was an Irish-born Protestant writer and statesman who spend the
late 1690s and early 1700s in the British Army and became a successful
playwright with a series of well-liked comedies that drew the favorable attention
of William III. Having reconnected with Steele thanks to their common
membership in the aforementioned organization, Addison proceeded to cooperate
with his childhood companion on a series of literary ventures which would go on
to contribute the greatest share to their respective reputations.
Their first venture was a society journal
known as The Tatler, published thrice-weekly beginning in April of 1709
and releasing its final issue in January of 1711. The mood of The Tatler was
playful, yet cultivated, with Steele mixing coffeehouse gossip with invented
stories for the stated purpose of educating his readers on proper manners by
correcting the shortcomings of the emerging middle-class. His intentions were,
he claimed, apolitical, but the values espoused by himself and his contributors
– a number which included Addison as well as noted satirist and pamphleteer
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) – were decidedly Whiggish. Steele’s next venture,
after he liquidated The Tatler, was the similarly structured Spectator,
to which Addison contributed to an even greater degree. Intended, like its
predecessor, “To enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality,” The
Spectator became a major influence on the contemporary British
middle-class, a staple of coffeehouse reading material, and an outlet for the
political and social convictions of its founders, contributors, and sponsors.
Of the six hundred and thirty-five essays that were ultimately published
therein between 1711 and 1712, Addison was responsible for two hundred and
seventy-four. His style was relaxed and conversational – to a fault, said those
who detested his use of dangling prepositions – and his subject matter lively
and varied. He wrote dialogues and narratives, treatises, and even hymns. In 1707,
he began writing for the theater, perhaps influenced by the successes of his
friend, Steele. And in 1713, his tragedy, Cato, was successfully
produced to the widespread acclamation of Whig and Tory alike.
Based
on this biography alone, one is doubtless given to wonder how a man like Joseph
Addison – a mainstream man of letter, statesman, and friend of the powerful –
came to write something as ostensibly sympathetic to republicanism and hostile
to monarchy as Cato would seem to be. Why would someone who owed their
success in large part to the patronage of royal favorites pen a drama so
unambiguously critical of the idea of arbitrary political authority? The
simplest answer, and the correct one, is that this was never the play’s
original intention. The time and place in which Cato was written,
published, and originally staged, recall, was one of marked domestic political
tension. A generation prior, it was true, the Glorious Revolution (1688) had
ushered in a major shift in Britain’s constitutional status quo by removing the
increasingly pro-Catholic James II (1733-1701) and codifying the rights of
Parliament in direct opposition to the traditional prerogatives of the British
Crown. But the concomitant ascension of the aforementioned William III ultimately
did not provide a conclusive answer to the question of who would rule and by
what standard of authority, in large part because William and his wife, Mary II
(1662-1694), remained childless. Lacking a Protestant heir, and with William’s
death set to bring about the ascension of his equally childless sister-in-law,
Anne (1665-1714), it became obvious to the governing Whigs – whose number
included the aforementioned Somers and Halifax – that a clearer description of
the line of succession was rather urgently required.
The result, in the immediate, was the
drafting and passage of the Act of Settlement (1701). Among various other
provisions intended to secure the authority of Parliament more fully against
potential encroachment by the prerogatives of the Crown – i.e. ensuring that
those holding royal offices or receiving royal pensions could not serve in the
House of Commons, prohibiting royal pardons from being granted to those who had
been impeached, etc. – this piece of legislation essentially culled the existing
order of royal succession in order to eliminate all professed Roman Catholics
and those wedded to the same. Dozens of individuals were accordingly passed
over in favor of the youngest daughter of the eldest daughter of William III’s
wife’s great-grandfather, James I (1566-1625). Sophia (1630-1714), whose own father
had been the Elector Palatine in the Holy Roman Empire, was in her early
seventies, the widow of one Elector of Hanover and mother to another. And while
she was pleased enough to have been named heir presumptive to one of the most
powerful realms in the early 18th-century world, she was also
clear-eyed enough to see that her ascension was by no means guaranteed.
These was still the matter of Anne, for one
thing. Though William III’s sister-in-law did ultimately succeed to the Crown
in 1702, her childlessness and her chronic ill-health conspired to place
herself and her ministers in a somewhat precarious position. Seeking to ensure
a smooth and timely transition upon Anne’s increasingly likely demise – and
motivated in no small part by the fact that Anne’s Catholic half-brother, James
Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), lived physically closer to London than
Sophia – it was proposed that Sophia remove herself to England and establish a
household there, a proposition which Sophia herself reacted to with enthusiasm.
Such an outcome never came to pass, however, because of what the presence of
Sophia in London would have represented for the ill and heirless queen. Though
older than Anne by some thirty-five years, Sophia was in much better health,
and in consequence appeared far more vigorous and vital than the sickly and
anemic monarch. Not only would Anne thus have likely been shamed by Sophia’s
presence, but the proximity of a designated heir who was neither a child nor a
particularly close relative was likely to result in a certain degree of tension
both between the two women and within the contemporary apparatus of government.
If Anne was likelier to die than Sophia, after all, and Sophia was herself in
London where ministers and courtiers could confer with her at their leisure,
why should anyone pay any more attention than necessary to the reigning Queen?
Everyone knew that her remaining time on the throne was limited. And everyone
knew that she had failed in her essential duty to produce a healthy, Protestant
heir. Bringing Sophia to England would only have emphasized these facts in a way
that those ministers ultimately responsible for extending the invitation
concluded would have been unnecessarily cruel. In evident recognition of this
thought process – being invited to London for fairly sound reasons, then
uninvited for somewhat trivial ones – Sophia was eventually given to conclude
that her status as heir to the English throne was more theoretical than
anything. “What Parliament does one day,” she remarked, “It undoes the next.”
As it turned out, the Dowager Electress was more right than she knew.
Notwithstanding both the outcome of the
Glorious Revolution (1688) and the passage of the Act of Settlement (1701),
there remained in both England and Scotland in the early 18th
century certain elements of the political establishment who were more inclined
towards a continuation of the rule of the House of Stuart than the imposition
of some foreign monarch who just happened to be a Protestant. This sentiment
was strongest among the Tories, long known for their loyalty to the Stuart
monarchs, and resulted in certain clandestine communications taking place
between prominent Tory statesmen and the aforementioned half-brother of the
reigning Queen Anne. Though born in London during his father’s reign and avowed
thereupon as Prince of Wales and heir apparent, the young James Francis Edward
Stuart was every bit the devoted scion of a deposed royal house. Like his
uncle, Charles II (1630-1685), he was the exiled son of a toppled king who
lived under the conviction that he must one day seize his rightful throne. And
like his father, James II, he was a member of a religious community whose
privileges had been severely curtailed by successive English governments. The
young James accordingly had every reason to harbor a degree of personal,
political, and confessional resentment towards the contemporary political
establishment in England, and to look upon the Whigs in particular – whose
pro-Parliamentary stance had its origins in 17th century opposition
to the latent absolutism of the Stuart monarchs – as upstarts in need of
proscription and punishment.
Likely cognizant of this lingering sense of
animus on the part of the Stuart heir to the throne, Tory statesman and Lord High
Treasurer Robert Harley (1661-1724) nevertheless sought to facilitate his
ascension in exchange for a promise to convert to the Anglican faith. James was
understandably resistant to such a proposition, viewing both his faith and his
kingdom as matters between himself and the Almighty, but Harley and fellow Tory
minister Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751) persisted all the same. Their reasoning,
in the end, was as much tactical as it was principled. Granting that the Tories
were habitually inclined towards support for the House of Stuart, and that the
prospect of a foreign-born monarch who knew nothing of English customs or
culture was far from pleasing, the efforts of the reigning Tory government to
secure Britain’s extrication from the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-1714) most definitely gave cause for Harley and his allies to fear the
ascension of Sophia or her eldest son. George, Elector of Hanover (1660-1727),
was one of Britain’s principle allies in the conflict against France and Spain.
And while the Tories under Harley had ample reason to desire an end to
Britain’s involvement – the cost, in blood and treasure, had thus far been
distressingly high – they were also aware that seeking a premature peace with
France would inevitably result in George’s displeasure. In the immediate, of
course, this was of little consequence. In the long term, however, with George
very likely to become King of Great Britain upon the deaths of the sickly Anne and
his own elderly mother, the Tories were likely to face punishment in the form
of a loss of royal patronage. If the Act of Settlement was simply ignored,
however, and if the young Stuart heir could be convinced to trade his faith for
a crown, then such an outcome might be safely avoided. Indeed, the preeminence
of the Tories might be guaranteed for a further generation if they once more
managed to demonstrate their fealty to the House of Stuart.
This, in essence, is the context from which
Joseph Addison’s Cato emerged. While, circa 1712, the Act of Settlement
had been in force for over a decade, and Sophia of Hanover remained stubbornly
vital and alive, events of a more recent vintage had nonetheless conspired to
cast the succession of the British Crown into doubt. Beyond their historical
fondness for the Stuarts and their tendency towards an active, empowered
monarchy, the Tories had succeeded in placing themselves in a position whereby
their political fortunes very much depended on rejecting the ascendancy of the
House of Hanover and embracing the exiled son of the deposed James II. Their
desired outcome was not a certainty, of course – young James was as stubborn as
he was devout. But actions were nevertheless being taken in Britain at the
beginning of the 1710s with the aim of clearing the way for a second
Restoration. Individuals were censured by the Tories in government for
publishing materials supportive of the Hanoverian succession, and military
figures suspected of favoring the ascension of Sophia – be they Whig or Tory –
were summarily dismissed. Even the Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), a career
soldier who got his start as a page in the household of James II and whose
leadership during the ongoing War of Spanish Succession was beyond reproach, became
a victim in turn. Eager to demonstrate to the French and the Spanish that they
were indeed prepared to cease hostilities and negotiate a settlement, the
Tories under Harley made sure to remove Marlborough from his position as
Captain-General of the Queen’s forces on a series of trumped-up charges,
forcing their fellow Tory into exile in Europe.
For the likes of Joseph Addison – a
lifelong Whig and a sitting member of House of Commons – the choice which he
and his fellow Britons were being asked to make as the reign of Queen Anne
inexorably drew to a close was as clear as the desired outcome was obvious. On
one hand was the path favored by the Tories: the restoration of the House of
Stuart, an empowered monarchy, a suitably weakened Commons, and a potentially
vengeful monarch. Tory power would be secured, the rule of Parliament
substantially weakened. On the other hand was what the Whigs desired: a
Hanoverian sovereign, an empowered Commons, a limited monarchy, and a monarch
so unfamiliar with British culture and British politics that they would have no
choice but to depend on the council of their British ministers and advisors. In
practice, it must be said, the division was not as clear cut as all that. There
were Tories, like Marlborough, who supported the Hanoverian succession – whose
support would indeed prove instrumental in securing the ultimately peaceful
ascension of George I in 1714. That being said, the Stuart/Hanover divide did align
rather neatly with the existing factional divisions in contemporary British
politics.
The Tories believed in the ability of the
Crown – suitably empowered – to balance the authority of Parliament, a position
which a theoretical King James III would most definitely have accommodated. The
Whigs, meanwhile, asserted that the only legitimate role for the sovereign was
to facilitate the administration of the state in accordance with the principles
of the British Constitution. Parliament was to have the final say in all
substantial political decisions, up to and including who would ascend the
throne. Being a man of rather rigid convictions and possessed of ample personal
and political justification to rankle at such limitations upon his authority as
king, James Stuart was unlikely to respect such an arrangement. A Queen Sophia
or a King George, by contrast, would have had little choice in the matter.
Speaking no English, and knowing little of British political affairs beyond the
fact that the Tories under Harley had lately slighted their Hanoverian allies, they
would be given to rely on Whig statesmen and ministers who would counsel them
accordingly that though their dignity and prestige were indeed second-to-none, their
practical authority was actually quite limited. Being, as aforementioned, a
Whig in good standing, Addison naturally supported the latter position. And
since he was a man of letters as well as a statesman, he turned his pen to the
cause. The result, at length, was Cato, a Tragedy, a drama in which a
man who has dedicated his life to public service and believes in government by
deliberation battles stubbornly – and ultimately in vain – against the
arbitrary authority of a single, charismatic leader and his self-interested
supporters.
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