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

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Chapter 9. The working of politics. The Disquisitiones politicae
do so in the future? The answer goes without saying. 64 But if past examples
are too unreliable to base one’s decision upon, what, then, are the alternatives?
One possible answer is already given; present-day concerns or the present
condition of a certain situation. But even this is questioned in certain disquisitiones.
So we read in a case study that deals with the town of Wesel in the
duchy of Kleef during the Dutch Revolt ‘that of two evils, one should always
choose the lesser one. But that should be considered as the lesser evil, not
what is only the lesser evil now, but what is also the lesser evil in the future’. 65
In another case study Boxhorn discredits the (common) people because it is
their nature to ‘measure the future according to present matters’. 66
Thus, just as the past is not always a reliable basis for the present, so the
present is not always a reliable basis for the future. Boxhorn seems to hint at
just that in his discussion of the refusal of the representatives of the States
General to restore to the citizens of the Frisian town Bolsward the privileges
they had enjoyed before they had put themselves under the auspices of the
parties belonging to the Union of Utrecht. 67 He justifies the refusal of the representatives
of the States General with the following argument:
The word ancient and its authority deceives many. Because new matters,
which have replaced the ancient ones and that have already been
observed for some time, have, if they are in good condition, more
authority than those ancient ones. But also those matters that now are
64 Boxhorn, Disquisitiones politicae, XLVII, pp. 220-22. The result was that it became forbidden for
any foreigner to hold an administrative office in the town of Trier.
65 Ibidem, XLI, pp. 197-98. ‘Ex duobus malis minus est eligendum semper, minus autem censeri
debet, non quod impraesens tantum tale, sed imposterum etiam tale futurum sit.’ According to the case
study, the Spanish general Francesco de Mendoza (1545-1628) gave the town of Wesel the choice either
to pay a certain amount of money or to suffer the billeting of a Spanish garrison. In this case study
Boxhorn is probably referring to a period at the end of the sixteenth century. In the autumn of the year
1598 Mendoza was with a strong army in the area of the German Lower-Rhine. In 1599 he tried to take
the city of Zaltbommel. The citizens of Wezel thought that they were secure because of their neutral
status. Schulten, Met vliegende vaandels en slaande trom, pp. 167-68. For the principle ‘that of two evils,
one should always choose the lesser one’, see also Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1109a-1109b [II:9], p.
36. ‘For one of the extremes is a greater missing of the mark, the other less so; and since hitting the mean
is extremely hard, we must take the next best course, as they say, and choose the lesser of two evils.’
66 Ibidem, XXXII, pp. 149-50. ‘Namque ea fere populi indoles est, ut umbras rerum & Species à rebus
plerunque non discernant: ut spes oblatas semper latius interpretentur: ut denique quae à Magistratibus
in spem promissa sunt, tanquam certa & confirmata amplectantur; ex praesentibus enim futurum metitur.’
The case study concerns the riots of the Parisian mob at the beginning of the French civil wars. The
mob had rioted after the Parliament of Paris had decreed that the clergy would be exempted from taxes.
67 Ibidem, XXXIX, pp. 179-85. Somewhere during the Dutch Revolt the citizens of Bolsward, fearing
a possible Spanish occupation, had given up certain of their privileges (among them the important
prerogative that they themselves could choose the town magistrates) to the stadholder or the States of
Friesland. After the Spanish threat had receded the citizens had demanded that their ancient privileges
should be restored to them and rallied against the town magistrates. The States General had send some
representatives to mediate between the two parties.