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

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Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
horn also took an ambivalent position on monarchy and that he had an outspoken
preference for aristocracy that he classified as the best form of government.
Like most political Aristotelians Boxhorn is a constitutional relativist. ‘That
form of ruling must be judged the best that suits the characters and the interests
of its inhabitants the most.’ 178 This does not stop Boxhorn deeming monarchy
‘the oldest, simplest, and, provided it is maintained in a good condition, the safest
way of commanding’. 179 It is on that last point, however, that monarchy often
founders. As Boxhorn has already made clear in his definition of what constitutes
a commonwealth, rulers who ruled alone are often tempted to disregard their
subjects’ interests and to follow their own at the cost of the common good, 180 a
view that also comes to the fore in his chapter on freedom. 181 Indeed, since even a
prince who observes the laws that have been obtained for the protection of freedom
‘seldom focuses his attention on the command of one person’, i.e. seldom
attends to how he as a sole ruler should command, tyranny is always lurking. 182
178 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, II.1.4, p. 258. ‘Quae autem regendi ratio & forma optima sit, non tam
anxiè, ut fieri solet, perscrutandum putamus. Utique enim, ut generatim dicam, quod sentio, ea optima
censenda, quae ad ingenia suorum & commoda, maximè est comparata. Neque enim omnibus in tantâ
morum, locorum, temporum diversitate omnia conveniunt.’ Ibidem, I.2, pp. 14-15. ‘Cum enim privatae
utilitates constituant publicam, necesse est, quomodo se habent privati actus, ita se habere publicas constitutiones.
At quia illi saepe diversi invicem, instituta quoque & formas rerumpublicarum diversas esse, quae
illis praesint, oportet … Pro loci enim diversitate, diversa sunt ingenia, at pro diversitate ingeniorum alia
atque alia imperia esse necessum est.’ See also Boxhorn, Emblemata politica: accedunt dissertationes politicae de
Romanorum Imperio et quaedamaliae, I.1, p. 140. ‘Ex quo apertum est, quae Reipub. forma melior sit, frustra
plerumque disputari. Quaevis enim optima & longè caeteris praeferenda, quae suorum ingeniis est attemperata.’
In Boxhorn’s time these were all common notions. See, for instance, Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale,
V.1. For the spread of these ideas in the Dutch Republic, see Meijer Drees, Andere landen, andere
mensen, pp. 12-24. The classical sources are Plato, Republic, 544d-e, and Aristotle, Politics, 1327b1 [VII:6-7].
179 Ibidem, II.2.1, p. 264. ‘Monarchia, Respublica est, in qua uni alicui & soli suprema & praecipua
Imperii cura est demandata, cui ex eo Regis aut Principis est cognomentum. Estque illa & antiquissima,
& facillima, & si rectè habeatur, tutissima imperandi ratio.’ Both Ernst Kossmann and Harm Wansink
explain this sentence and Boxhorn’s defence of monarchy and primogenitur by pointing to the scholarly
‘aristotelian-humanist’ tradition that had a ‘monarchical tendency’. Kossmann, Political Thought in the
Dutch Republic, pp. 42-43, with quotes on the latter, and Wansink, Politieke wetenschappen aan de Leidse
universiteit, pp. 178-81, 245-46. Both, however, overlook the condition that Boxhorn attaches here. That
same condition can also be found in Cicero’s account of monarchy in the Republic. Cicero, that staunch
defender of Roman freedom, calls monarchy ‘that form of constitution … most liable to change; for
when it is upset by the incompetence of one man, there is nothing to stop it from falling headlong into
utter ruin. Monarchy in itself is not only free from blame; it is, I am inclined to think, far preferable to
the other two simple types of constitution (if I could bring myself to approve of any simple type), but
only as long as it retains its proper form’. Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, II.43, p. 48.
180 Ibidem, I.2, p. 10. ‘Respublica quam hic definimus pro quovis imperio usurpatur, etiam pro cui
unus praeest, si modo ille saluti obedientium consulat. At quia saepè is aut publica privatis postponit,
aut illecerbis voluptatum rapitur, aut ad tyrannidem inclinans tantò plus infert damni, quantò potentior
est, obtinuit, ut Respublica Monarchiae ferè opponatur.’
181 Ibidem, I.5.14, p. 48. ‘Sed cum sub unius summo Imperio singulatim non eluceat subditorum
libertas, ejusmodi Principatus, & libertas, apud Autores fere opponuntur. Et cum plerumque iniqua
sint ita arbitria Imperiantium, ut Tacitus loquitur, res, olim dissociabiles, libertas, & principatus, raro
conjunguntur.’ See Tacitus, Agricola, III.1.
182 Ibidem, II.4.3, p. 294. ‘Cum enim ad Imperium unius raro conferat Princeps animum, qui aut
infinitam frenet potestatem, aut eas pro libertate repertas leges observet, in quas juravit, Monarchicus
status in vitium facilè excedit, quod Tyrannidem appellamus.’