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

290
Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
then, express the agreement reached by deliberation, and as such represent
the common consensus about a certain issue, or, reasoned from the negative
perspective of man’s ambitious and greedy character, they articulate man’s
compliance, be it out of self-interest or fear. Since they articulate and represent
the common consensus, it is these fundamental laws that should and could
rule, and not man’s own private opinion. It is on this belief in the rule of law
that Boxhorn’s defence of polyarchical regimes ultimately rests; the private
opinions of the many have become one in the law, and it is this law that both
regulates the relationships between subjects and rulers and those between the
rulers themselves. 207 Fear and self-interest will guarantee that both rulers and
subjects will abide to the laws, which themselves are the expressions of these
fears and interests. 208 Thus, Boxhorn comes up with a Machiavellian argument
to refute Machiavelli. 209
The ground has now been prepared to assert that aristocracy is the most commendable
form of government. Boxhorn defines aristocracy as ‘that form of
command, in which the whole supreme power is transferred to a small section
of citizens, who excel as far as descent, wealth, and especially virtue goes’. 210
The main difference between aristocracy and democracy is not the number of
persons that have been put in charge of the commonwealth; in both the number
is small. 211 In a democracy, however, these few men are chosen from the entire
207 As we have seen in chapter 5, Boxhorn’s defence of prince Charles’s right to the throne of England
in 1649 ultimately also rested on this belief in the rule of law. Fundamental laws were seen as
imposing limits upon the power of rulers, and as such they ‘were grist to the mill of outright resistance
theorists’. In this sense, Boxhorn can be seen as an adherent of ‘constitutionalism’ such as described by
Howell Lloyd, with this important note, that, just as Lloyd himself acknowledges, the term ‘had no currency
in the political thought of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’. Lloyd, “Constitutionalism”,
pp. 254-79, with quotes on p. 254 and p. 279. See also chapter 5.
208 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.5, p. 59.
209 See Machiavelli, Discorsi, I.4.4-6, pp. 34-35. ‘I say that those who condemn the conflicts between
the Nobles and the Plebs appear to me to be blaming the very things that were the primary reasons
for Rome’s remaining free and to be paying more attention to the shouts and cries that these conflicts
aroused than to the good results they had. They do not consider that in every republic there are two
opposing humors – the people and the upper class and that all laws to promote freedom derive from
the conflict between them. We can readily see this from what occurred in Rome: from the Tarquins to
the Gracchi, a period of more than three hundred years, conflicts in Rome rarely involved banishment
and even more rarely bloodshed … Nor can a republic in which there are so many examples of virtù
reasonably be called disorderly, since good examples derive from good upbringing, good upbringing
from good laws, and good laws from the very conflicts that many people condemn indiscriminately.
For anyone who studies their result closely will discover that they did not lead to any exile or violence
inimical to the common good, but produced laws and institutions conducive to public freedom.’
210 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, II.5.9, p. 321. ‘Aristocratia autem ea imperii forma est, in qua
in partem civium minorem, eamque genere, censu, & virtute imprimis excellentem, suprema omnis
potestas est translata.’ Compare Boxhorn’s definition of aristocracy with Aristotle’s definition in Politics,
1293b1 [IV:7], p. 102. ‘The term “aristocracy” is rightly applied to the form of government which
is described in the first part of our treatise; for that only can be rightly called aristocracy which is a
government formed of the best men absolutely, and not merely of men who are good relative to some
hypothesis.’
211 Ibidem, II.5, p. 327. ‘Ac primâ quidem fronte duo isti Reip. status vix commodè distingui posse