In 1720, the bubonic plague devastated France, killing 100,000 people in Marseilles and surrounding areas. Writing the second of Cato’s Letters from London, Thomas Gordon noted, “We have already had, and still have, a contagion of another sort, more universal, and less merciful than that at Marseilles.”
Cato’s Letters gained popularity in Britain and later influenced the Founding Fathers. Now, facing our own contagions at the tricentennial of its publication, we need Cato’s key message more than ever: to choose liberty as our right.
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