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

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Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
However, since ‘there are in the world seldom good people’ to be found, the
perfect aristocracy ‘is easier to describe than to detect’. 218
Boxhorn also describes another type of aristocracy. This type existed among
the ancient Carthaginians and consisted of a mixture of aristocracy, oligarchy,
and democracy, because the people who were chosen to hold office were few,
rich, endowed with virtue, and chosen from amongst the people. 219
And the commonwealth of the Hollanders agrees mostly with that
type of aristocracy. For the qualities, the riches, and the people are
taken into account. Therefore, two [things] are said about the aldermen
and the burgomasters in the oldest statutes of the princes: they
must be the richest men from the people and the best. 220
Through a detour, then, we have come to the theoretical underpinning of
what history had already told Boxhorn, namely the logic behind the functioning
and success of Holland, the Dutch Republic’s most richest and powerful
province.
Boxhorn was not unique in comparing Holland with ancient Carthage.
Grotius, for example, in his widely popular book the De antiquitate, had
defended Holland’s aristocratic form of government, a ‘government of the
two vices, one of excess, the other of deficiency. It is a mean also in that some vices fall short of what is
right in feelings and actions, and others exceed it, while virtue both attains and chooses the mean. So, in
respect of its essence and the definition of its substance, virtue is a mean, while with regard to what is
best and good it is an extreme.’
218 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, II.5, p. 329. ‘Sed quia rari in mundo boni, facilius est hanc
describere quam invenire.’ This also brings to mind Aristotle’s critique on Socrates’s description of the
ideal polis in Plato’s Laws as an ideal impossible to obtain in reality. Aristotle, Politics, 1265a1 [II:6].
219 Ibidem. ‘Diximus §.15. praeter illam primam alias quoque dari Aristocratiae species, ubi tamen nunquam
excludenda sit virtus. Omnis enim Aristocratia semper virtutem intendere debet, quae anima est
ejus imperii, sed praeter haec respiciunt quaedam opes, genus, populum, quo reliquae formae à prima
differunt. Exemplum Aristocratiae ex posteriore genere est ap. Carthaginenses, in quorum Rep. occurrebat
Aristocratia, quia virtute praediti, Democratia quia è populo, Oligarchia, quia divites & pauci eligebantur
ad Magistratus gerendos.’ Boxhorn closely follows Aristotle’s description of the Carthaginian ‘constitution’
in Politics, 1293b1 [IV:7], pp. 102-3. ‘And so where a government has regard to wealth, excellence,
and the populace, as at Carthage, that is aristocracy; and also where it has regard only to two out of
the three, as at Lacedaemon, to excellence and the populace, and the two principles of democracy an
excellence temper each other. There are these two forms of aristocracy in addition to the first and perfect
state, and there is a third form, viz. the constitutions which incline more than the so-called constitutional
government towards oligarchy.’ Unlike Aristotle, who treats oligarchy as a deviant form of aristocracy
(see especially Politics, 1289a1 [IV:2], p. 93ff), Boxhorn uses the term ‘oligarchy’ here simply to denote a
regime where those who rule do so not on account of their virtue (a true aristocracy in the Aristotelian
sense of the word), but on account of their wealth. Although in this particular case a moral judgement is
lacking, we will see that Boxhorn followed Aristotle’s negative judgement of oligarchy.
220 Ibidem, II.5, pp. 329-30. ‘Et Batavor. Resp. fere ad istam Aristocratiae speciem accedit. Nam &
virtutis & opum & populi habetur ratio, unde in antiquissimis constitutionibus Principum duo dicuntur
de scabinis & consulibus, debere eos ditissimos è populo esse & optimos.’ This is a clear reference to the
privilege that Boxhorn had recited in the Dutch version of the Theatrum. Boxhorn, Toneel ofte beschryvinge,
p. 151. See chapter 7.