historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

144
Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
patronage, saw to it that only blood relatives or members from their own rank
were elected to fill a vacancy, thereby limiting membership ‘to a handful of
rich patrician families’. 114 Holland’s town councils, then, were ‘aristocratic’ in
name, but ‘oligarchic’ in practice.
In imitation of Vranck Boxhorn assigns three important privileges to the
town council. The first privilege is that the town council has the right to
choose every year several of its members to fulfil the town’s most important
administrative offices, a privilege they sometimes have to share with the
stadholder. 115 The second important privilege of the town council is the right
to deliberate and decide about matters that concern the town and the whole
province. Here it is important to note that decisions in the town council are
reached by majority vote: ‘and what the greater part of this town council
shall approve, shall be explained and held as the opinion of that whole town
in those assemblies.’ 116
‘Those assemblies’ are the assemblies of the States of Holland and the third
important privilege of the town council is the right to elect three of its members
to go to the meetings of the States of Holland, to convene with delegates
of the other towns and those of the nobility, and to express their town’s opinion
on matters concerning the whole province. ‘And on these delegates [i.e.
of both the towns and the nobility-JN] lean all affairs, which pertain to the
public welfare and the preservation of the fatherland, [namely], to examine,
to discuss, and to decide on all those matters, which contribute greatly to the
good of the commonwealth.’ 117 The delegates, however, have no power of
114 J.L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic: The Politics of Particularism (Clarendon Press; Oxford,
1994), pp. 20-21, 34, and Henk van Nierop, “Popular Participation in Politics in the Dutch Republic”, in
Peter Blickle (ed.), Resistance, Representation and Community (Clarendon Press; Oxford, 1997), pp. 276-79.
The original is quite clear that it are the members of the town council who choose new members. ‘Once
chosen the councillors serve as long as they live and possess burgher rights. When someone dies or
leaves the town, the board chooses a new member from among the citizens to make up their number.’
Kossmann and Mellink (eds.), Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands, p. 277.
115 Boxhorn, Commentariolus, X.9, p. 153.
116 Ibidem, X.24, p. 159. ‘His acceptis Nobiles inter se & singulae Civitates in Vrbico Senatu sententiam
exquirunt, & ex majoris partis suffragiis concludunt super iis, de quibus in proximis Comitiis est
agendum.’ Ibidem, XI.5, pp. 165-66. ‘Hic Senatus convocari non solet, nisi ubi deligendi ac creandi novi
Consules, novique Scabini sunt: ad ista horum conventus quoque indicitur, quoties Comitia Ordinum
convocantur, quo expendant capita rerum, de quibus in iis Comitiis erit deliberandum. Nam quicquid
majori hujus Senatus parti visum fuerit, pro sententia totius illius civitatis in ipsis comitiis exponitur
atque habetur.’ By explicitly holding that decisions in the town council are reached by majority vote
Boxhorn reveals a ‘secret of command’ (arcanum imperii), for as Lesley Price explains, although in town
councils ‘all decisions were taken collegially, that is, the raad was assumed to have reached a common
opinion, and to be acting as a single body’ and ‘dissident minorities were expected to go along loyally
with the majority’, for the outside world a ‘considerable effort was made to maintain an appearence of
solidarity’. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic, pp. 22-23. See also ibidem, p. 64.
117 Boxhorn, Commentariolus, X.16, p. 156. ‘Atque his delegatis incumbit, res omnes, quae ad publicam
salutem & patriae conservationem pertinent cognoscere, pertractare, deque iis omnibus ea statuere,
quae maximopere bono Reipublicae faciunt.’