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

Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
best’, by referring to Carthage amongst others. 221 In the same book, however,
Grotius had also made it very clear that Holland’s aristocratic form of government
contained a monarchical element. ‘On the other hand, we share the
situation that a princely authority, circumscribed by laws, is added to the
government of the best.’ That princely authority was the stadholder, whose
powers according to Grotius in the De antiquitate, ‘are marks of a very high
authority’, and who, together with the States, had ‘the control over the state,
which used to be held by the Count’. 222 This compound composition of ‘the
best of both estates’ (i.e. the nobility and the people) and a princely authority
was Grotius’s version of the concept of the mixed regime in which different
parts of society hold on to some of the central tenets of government. 223 The
concept, both in its aristocratic-monarchical form and in its Polybian form (a
mixture of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy), enjoyed great popularity
in the Dutch Republic in the first half of the seventeenth century. 224 As we
recall, Burgersdijk judged the former to be ‘the most outstanding form of government’;
the latter he deemed the safest and, perhaps with the Dutch context
in mind, ‘appropriate for towns that control very large dominions, or for
entire provinces’. 225 The example of the ancient Carthaginians, who, as both
Aristotle and Polybius had observed, had kings, and the judgement of contemporaries
confirmed this view. 226 Yet despite the authority of the ancients
221 Grotius, The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic, VII.17, p. 113. ‘For if we apply reason, it persuades
us that power in the state should best be entrusted to the best; or if we accept the authority of respected
writers, we find that the government of the best was praised by the wisest men of antiquity; or, if we
look for parallel cases, the very celebrated examples of Crete, Sparta, Carthage, Rhodes, Marseilles,
Thessaly, Achaia, Samos, Cnidos, Chios and Corfu, and, as many believe, Rome itself, in the period
when it flourished most with virtue, immediately present themselves.’
222 Ibidem, VIII.9-18, pp. 109-13. See also ibidem, II.14, p. 65. ‘Thus we have found that the Batavians
lived under a government of the best, but in combination with a prince, which princely power was either
continuous under the name of a king, or temporary under the name of a commander.’
223 In this context the introduction to Grotius’s The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic prefers to speak of
a ‘compound constitution’ rather than a ‘mixed constitution’ since the latter term ‘usually refers to a combination
in which elements of all three forms democracy, aristocracy and monarchy are present’. See the
introduction to Grotius, The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic, pp. 6-8, 13-18, with quote on p. 7, footnote 12.
224 See, amongst others, Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, pp. 31-43; Blom, “Politieke
theorieën in het eerste kwart van de zeventiende eeuw”; Van Gelderen, “Aristotelians, Monarchomachs
and Republicans”, pp. 210-13.
225 Burgersdijk, Idea politica, XXIV.2, pp. 210-11, and XXIV.24-25, pp. 218-21. It should, however, also
be remembered that Burgersdijk also ranked monarchy as ‘the safest’ (firmissimus
( ) and ‘the best’ (opti-
mus) form of government. Ibidem, II.2, pp. 9-10, and XXI.3, pp. 190-92. See chapter 3.
226 Polybius had thought Carthage to be a ‘well-designed’ mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
For Aristotle, the government of Carthage had remained primarily ‘oligarchical’. Compare Aristotle,
Politics, 1272b1-1273b1 [II:11], with Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert.
Selected with an Introduction by F.W. Walbank (Penguin Books; London, 1979), VI.51, pp. 344-45, with quote
on p. 344. For a modern analysis of the Carthaginian ‘constitution’, see Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History. Translated
by Antonia Nevill (Blackwell Publishers; Oxford/Cambridge, 1995), pp. 110-20. Boxhorn owned a copy
of the Greek and Latin edition of Polybius’s work, which was made by the French scholar Isaac Casaubon
(1559-1614). Catalogus Variorum & Insignium Librorum, Celeberrimi ac Eruditissimi Viri Marci Zueri Boxhornii, v.
293