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

Chapter 10. Conclusion
claimed ‘that the form of each state must necessarily be retained and cannot
be changed without risking the total ruin of the state’. 9 Boxhorn reasoned
differently; sometimes the form of government must be changed precisely in
order to save the state from total ruin.
After 1648, however, Boxhorn sung a more conservative tune. In the De
successione et iure primogenitorum and the Metamorphosis Anglorum he denied
the legitimacy of the republican regime that ruled England after the execution
of Charles I, while in the De majestate he defended the Dutch Revolt in words
that suggest that he followed the Dutch resistance thesis which placed sovereignty
in the hands of the provincial States. In its most elaborated expression
this Dutch resistance thesis emphasised the continuity of Dutch political practice
and traced it back to Roman times. 10 A possible explanation for Boxhorn’s
change of tune is that he was sincerely shocked by what had happened in
England. Perhaps he also feared that the execution of Charles I might lead
to another European war in which the Dutch Republic would be caught up.
On the other hand, it might also be the case that Boxhorn wanted the Dutch
Republic to take a more aggressive stand towards the English Commonwealth,
as stadholder William II would have loved to see. 11 For now, however,
the real motives behind Boxhorn’s change of tune with regard to regime
change remain illusive for us.
But how, then, should we interpret Boxhorn’s plea for the ‘democratisation’
of government in the province of Holland? For one thing, it should not
lead us to think that deep down inside Boxhorn harboured strong democratic
sympathies. He did not believe that monarchies were intrinsically bad and
that democracies, in which the people – either directly or indirectly – rule
themselves, were the only good and legitimate forms of government. Furthermore,
like most seventeenth-century Dutch political thinkers, indeed like
most seventeenth-century European political thinkers, Boxhorn did not have
a high opinion of the common people.
However, Boxhorn’s plea for the ‘democratisation’ of government in the
province of Holland does put him in the same camp of those people who
were critical of the closed-off oligarchical regenten regime that ruled the towns
of the Dutch Republic and who pleaded for a more open and accessible form
of government that would allow a larger part of the Dutch (male) popula-
9 Baruch de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise. Edited by Jonathan Israel. Translated by Michael Silverthorne
and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 1 st ed. 2007, 2008), XVIII.10, p. 228.
10 At least as far as the province of Holland was concerned.
11 William II supported the cause of the Stuarts, his family-in-laws, both before and after the execution
of Charles I. ‘Hostilities against the English Commonwealth’ was one of William II’s ‘firm goals’.
Rowen, The Princes of Orange, pp. 81, 91, with quotes on the latter.
333