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

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Chapter 9. The working of politics. The Disquisitiones politicae
Bacon was not alone in his fear of change. Most people living in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, even they who just like him and Boxhorn
acknowledged the importance of time and change, were deeply worried about
the disruptive effects of change. 92 To counter its potential danger, many tried
to diminish the importance of change by emphasising the ‘immutability’ and
‘continuity’ of things. Both Vossius and Heereboord adopted this technique. 93
Boxhorn, however, did not. This is not to say that Boxhorn denied the dangerous
potential change carried with it. On the contrary, as his historical works
testify, Boxhorn was well aware of the havoc change could create, especially
in the field of politics and religion. He therefore agreed with Tacitus that ‘frequent
changes were not useful’. 94
But Boxhorn also believed that, as time goes on, the occurence of change
was inevitable. Almost everything on earth was temporal and subjected to
change. Sooner or later something ‘new’ was bound to show up. For Boxhorn
the question was not so much how to stop change from happening or how to
diminish its importance, but how to best deal with it when it occured, even
if the change in question involved or led to matters previously unknown, as
in the case of the discovery of the Americas by the Europeans at the end of
the fifteenth century. In a world of change adaptation to the changing circumstances
of time becomes crucial and, in the realm of politics, should even
determine the forms of government.
Because usually it so happens in human affairs that, as the nature of
the circumstances changes, one and the same way of commanding, at
one time rightly to be praised, must then rightly be detested, it seems.
That is why the commonwealth [of Rome-JN], which was exhausted
by civil dissensions, was bound to have first kings, then the command
of the Senate and the people, and finally again the command of one
ruler. 95
92 See for this theme Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance, chapters 4-8 and 12-15.
93 See chapters 3 and 6.
94 Tacitus, The Annals, XII.11.3; Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, II.4, p. 304; idem, Emblemata politica:
accedunt dissertationes politicae de Romanorum Imperio et quaedamaliae, I.1, p. 151, and XIV.9, p. 326; idem,
“De Veteri Achaeorum Republica”, 4, p. 570; idem, De majestate, p. 5.
95 Boxhorn, Emblemata politica: accedunt dissertationes politicae de Romanorum Imperio et quaedamaliae,
XV.5, p. 332. ‘Ita enim fere fit in rebus humanis, ut, pro diversa temporum conditione, una atque eadem
imperandi ratio, laudanda nonnunquam, subinde detestanda merito videatur. Primo ergo Reges, dein
Senatus & populi, tandem iterum unius principis imperium fatigatae discordiis civilibus Reip. debebantur.’
See also ibidem, 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.
Quare & post exactos Reges, Senatus & Populi, post certamina populi & potentiorum, Caesarum Imperium
Romanis maximè convenisse censendum est.’