Commonwealth

particular ends they pursue, but only according to the mode of their 
operation. Nevertheless one cannot get over the fact that another element 
than purely constitutional factors is brought in. It is a particular example 
of his tendency to mingle judgements of fact with judgements of value 
without distinguishing them.
Much more original was the distinction he made in the second place between 
the sovereign and the government, or machine through which the sovereign 
operates. Each of the three fundamental types of commonwealth can be 
provided with a form of government normally characteristic of one of the 
other two [II, ii]. By this test ancient Rome was a democracy governed 
aristocratically, and contemporary France, England, and Spain monarchies 
governed democratically. This analysis was, he claimed with justice, new. 
Moreover it was surely much more true to the facts than the old doctrine of 
mixed constitutions.
Bodin gave so much time and space to the meticulous examination of the 
structure of actual states because the ultimate purpose of his analysis was 
a practical one. He wanted to find out the secret of stability in a 
politically unstable world. Being a sixteenth-century Frenchman, and a 
patriot, his decision was inevitably in favour of monarchy [VI, iv]. The 
essential mark of sovereignty is the power to command, and commands, as he 
says, must proceed from a single will. Collective sovereignty belongs to the 
realm of ideas rather than of actualities, so that in times of crisis, when 
immediate and decisive action is necessary, all types of commonwealth tend 
to revert temporarily to monarchy by the institution of a dictatorship, or 
some such expedient. Moreover, since he rejected the necessity of consent to 
government, the important thing about government in his view is not that it 
should be approved, but that it should be well-advised. A king alone can 
consult whom he wills, and be governed by the advice of the wiser, and not 
just the more numerous part. Democracies where the opposite is true, and it 
is the opinion of the majority that prevails, he thought the least stable 
form of commonwealth because the majority of men include the ignorant, 
passionate, and gullible. Aristocracies he also thought insecure because 
perpetually threatened by dissensions, dissension between the governed and 
the governing class, and struggles for power within the governing class 
itself. Only in a monarchy are conditions to be found favourable to that 
alliance of unity with wisdom which makes the proper exercise of power 
possible.

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Defects however can be mitigated, if not eliminated, if the form of the 
government is different from that of the commonwealth. The democratic Roman 
Republic lasted so long because governed aristocratically, in that office 
was largely confined to the patrician class. It was much vexed by civil 
strife, but it exhibited a measure of wisdom and discipline in the conduct 
of affairs which could not have been expected from the plebs, and which 
secured its long survival. But with the example of the three great western 
monarchies before his eyes, he was convinced that the most stable form is a 
monarchy governed democratically, that is to say where the king consults the 
estates, and all subjects are eligible to office, and it is not exclusive to 
any one class. Such a state has both the strength that comes from unity, and 
the strength that comes from common consent.
Not that Bodin thought that it was possible to establish at will those forms 
perceived to be the most stable. On the contrary he did not consider that 
the particular forms of states are a matter of human choice and contrivance 
at all, but rather the inevitable product of environment, or 'climate' as he 
calls it [V, i]. His doctrines were a deduction from still current medieval 
physiological theories about the close inter-relation of mind and body. 
Temperature and humidity determine physique, and physique determines mental 
and moral aptitudes. This being so it is obvious that the forms of law and 
government must also be shaped by these unalterable conditions. Rather 
surprisingly for so systematic a thinker he makes no attempt to bring his 
argument full circle, and work out a connection between the three climates 
he distinguished, frigid, temperate, and torrid, and the three fundamental 
types of commonwealth. It would have meant much forcing of the facts about 
the distribution of political forms in Europe to make them fit into a neat 
pattern of this sort. He preferred to leave these ends loose, and confined 
himself to such scattered observations as that the vigour and independence 
of mountain peoples, which comes from the severity of the climatic 
conditions, explain why the Swiss and the Florentines have developed 
democratic forms of government, whereas the more relaxing effect of damp and 
marshy country predispose Venetians to submit to the rule of an aristocracy.
Forms of government and of law must be judged therefore by relative and not 
by absolute standards. The savage penal code, and warlike policies 
appropriate to the physically vigorous, brave but stupid northern races are 
altogether unsuited to the delicate, timid, imaginative, and subtle 
southerner. Diplomacy is the effective weapon of their advancement. Bodin 
had said at the beginning of the Six books of the Commonwealth that no state 
pursues the good life absolutely, but always some particular and partial 
good. His doctrine of the influence of environment meant that it is in the 
nature of things that this should be so.
Here a modem reader would be satisfied that Bodin had made his point and 

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need carry the argument no further. But Bodin meant by 'climate' something 
much more all-pervasive than temperature, humidity, and the he of the land, 
though he included all these things. When he subordinated the commonwealth 
to divine and natural law he did not only mean that its laws and its 
government ought to conform to a moral order. He also meant that it had its 
necessary place in a physical universe subject to invariable natural laws 
proceeding from God as first cause. It is only when his cosmological ideas 
are taken into consideration that the full significance of his relativist 
views on politics is to be appreciated.[4] His system was medieval, for he 
deliberately rejected Copernicus in the Novum Theatrum Naturae, and adhered 
to the traditional view based on Aristotle's physics. That system was 
necessarily astrological. If Aristotle's premises were accepted, first that 
the universe consists of a material core, the earth and its atmosphere, 
enclosed within an immaterial envelope, the heavens; and second, that matter 
is in itself inert and formless; it followed that its myriad forms, and the 
unceasing transmutation to which it is subject, must proceed from immaterial 
agents external to it. These agents can only be the stars. Their perpetual 
and complex revolutions in their circular orbits round the earth are the 
cause of all phenomena and all change of any kind. All things, from a grain 
of corn to a commonwealth, are moulded by the place and time of their 
occurrence, and their life-histories governed by the movement of the 
heavens. Hence his view of history as the record of recurrences. The 
historical process must be cyclic rather than evolutionary since it proceeds 
from the circular motion of the heavens.
It was therefore natural and inevitable that his treatment of history should 
seem from our point of view to lack perspective. He agreed with Machiavelli 
that history repeats itself: democracy in ancient Rome, or in the Forest 
Cantons of contemporary Switzerland was a manifestation of a fixed and 
constant type. But whereas Machiavelli derived his cyclic view of the 
historical process from his doctrine of the constancy of human nature, Bodin 
derived it from the recurrent pattern of events inherent in the cosmic 
process. It will be observed that Bodin's ideas about the relativity of laws 
and institutions have a spatial rather than a temporal reference. As one 
moves through space they differ, according to the different figure of the 
heavens enclosed within their horizon. But as one moves through time one 
keeps on coming upon the same phenomena, according as the stars repeat their 
revolutions.
This is not to say that he believed in an order of necessity in human 
affairs. The search for the principles of practical wisdom in politics which 
dominates so much of the Six books of the Commonwealth presupposes the 
opposite. Bodin held the orthodox view that the will, being immaterial, is 
free of those celestial forces that mould matter. If a man cannot change his 
environment and the influences to which he is subject, he can make the best 

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or the worst of his situation. The increasing disorder of the world in which 
he lived convinced Bodin that statesmen were making the worst of it, largely 
through ignorance, and states, as do natural bodies, were perishing untimely 
from violent disorders.
Books IV and V therefore are devoted to the problem of the preservation of 
the commonwealth, or rather, of the sovereign power which is its 
constitutive principle. It takes the form of a discussion of revolutions, 
what induces them, and what precautions are necessary to avoid them, for it 
must be remembered that for Bodin a revolution which removes the seat of 
sovereignty involves the destruction of one state and the foundation of a 
new one. Bodin was always drawing conclusions about what ought to be done, 
but these two books are entirely devoted to the applied science of politics. 
He considers such questions as the laws governing the distribution of 
property [V, ii], the rules relating to eligibility for office and the terms 
of appointment [IV, iv], the attitude to be taken to political parties, or 
to professional and other associations of citizens [IV, vii and III, vii], 
or the best way of securing the state against attack [V, v]. He lays down a 
few rules of general application. Patrimonial estates should not be 
confiscated, whatever the needs of the exchequer [V, iii]. Divisions among 
citizens such as are embodied in political parties should never be 
encouraged, but peaceful associations such as trade-guilds should [III, 
vii]. Office should never be sold [V, iv].
But nearly all his conclusions are, as is to be expected, relative to the 
type of commonwealth to be preserved, for as he says, states of opposite 
tendencies require opposite policies. For instance, in a democracy office 
must be open to all and of short duration to preserve an even distribution 
of power by equal and rapid rotation. If this is not secured democracy 
perishes. By parity of argument in an aristocracy eligibility must be 
confined to the ruling class. In the case of monarchy, however, since it is 
not based on the rule of a class, the king can choose his officers where he 
will, and be guided solely by convenience in fixing the terms of 
appointment, long in subordinate positions where experience is useful, short 
in the high offices of state where long enjoyment of power makes a mere 
subject too mighty.
He owed much in these two books to a similar discussion in the Politics. But 
he was an independent observer of contemporary politics, and not only did he 
apply what Aristotle had to say to conditions in the sixteenth century, but 
recognized problems which did not exist for Aristotle. Aristotle suggested 
his treatment of the subject of tyranny. But such discussions as those on 
treatment of political factions, or the arming of the subject, derived from 
his own observation or reading. This preoccupation with contemporary 
problems is a result of his didactic intentions. As has been said already, 

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he wished to remedy, not just analyse, the causes of disruption. He was 
addressing himself to statesmen, and there were two lessons he wished to 
impress on them. First, that just because a commonwealth is the outcome of 
circumstances, preconceived notions about how it should be governed are 
useless and even mischievous. The ruler must start with a thorough 
understanding of the particular situation with which he has to deal, since 
fundamentally he cannot change it. And second, having such knowledge of the 
situation, he must then know what experience has shown to be the appropriate 
way of dealing with it. 
The discussion of the means of preservation of the different kinds of 
commonwealth, when taken in conjunction with the initial account of the 
commonwealth as such, raises considerable difficulties. What ends did Bodin 
really think the state served? In book I it is said that it exists to 
promote the good and virtuous life for its citizens. A commonwealth is 
contrasted with a band of robbers, for one is based on justice and the other 
on violence. He also said that having determined the end, the means to its 
realization would then be considered. But the argument does not develop in 
this way. It is not means to the end of virtue in the citizen which are 
subsequently discussed, but means to the end of the preservation of the 
state, regardless of its character. 
He had of course pointed out in book I that a state must live before it can 
live well, and this concentration on the immediate problem of survival 
rather than on the ultimate purpose of the good life does not in itself 
create any difficulty. But he not only includes tyranny among the true types 
of commonwealth, but considers how it may best be preserved. Since tyranny 
is by definition that form of the commonwealth in which divine and natural 
law is set at defiance, it is difficult to see why he should have recognized 
it as a commonwealth while rejecting a robber-band, or how it is to be 
reconciled with the definition of the state as a rightly ordered government.
His inconclusiveness on this crucial point was a consequence of what was 
characteristic of much of his argument, a tendency to pass from a discussion 
of what is right to a discussion of what is necessary or expedient, without 
apparently being aware of the shift of ground. An example has already been 
noticed in his analysis of the fundamental types of commonwealth. Another is 
the criteria appealed to in determining the best form of commonwealth [VI, 
iv]. Or again, it is never quite clear whether he insisted on discipline 
because it was conducive to virtue, or because it was a condition of 
political stability. His hesitation arose from the fact that he saw the 
state in the first place as the possible, and only possible, instrument of 
the good life on earth. He also saw that to be this it must be an effective 
power. Thinking of what the state might be he gave it by definition a moral 
purpose. Thinking of how necessary it is, he accepted any effective 

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organized power as a true state. The contradiction was never resolved. In 
the last analysis he thought any form of polity, however tyrannical, better 
than anarchy, just as he thought any system of beliefs, however crude and 
cruel, better than atheism. Therefore the preservation of some sort of state 
must in all circumstances be secured.
The whole work concludes with a chapter on justice. This would seem at first 
glance to be a return at the last to the theme of the rightly ordered 
commonwealth described at the beginning, as distinct from the efficiently 
governed one, which subsequently occupied his attention. In book I, when 
illustrating the partial aims of all particular states, he put Rome highest 
because her achievement was justice. The whole book therefore closes on the 
suggestion that the best realizable right order which actual states can hope 
to achieve is not the whole good of man, but that modest degree of it which 
is called justice. What he meant by the term is therefore of some 
importance.
In the earlier part of the Six books of the Commonwealth when he is 
discussing the commonwealth as such, he not infrequently uses the term 
'natural justice', without however explaining what he meant by it. The 
context generally suggests however that he meant respect for the rights of 
the subject to his liberty and property. In this last chapter on the other 
hand it is political justice and not natural that he is talking about. He 
had noticed the difference when he observed that Plato thought of justice as 
a philosopher and not as a jurist. In this last chapter Bodin is speaking as 
a jurist. He defines it in legal terms, as the principle upon which rewards 
and punishments are distributed in the commonwealth, that is to say the 
working of the criminal law, and the administration. But whereas natural 
justice is presumably in his view constant and universal, here the proper 
order of justice is relative to the type of commonwealth. Commutative 
justice, or the strictly equal distribution of honours and penalties 
preserves a democracy but would destroy an aristocracy. Conversely 
distributive justice, or award in accordance with the quality of persons, 
safeguards an aristocracy but would corrupt a democracy. In a monarchy where 
a more elastic social system is possible than in either of the other two 
types, since in it classes are at once distinguished and yet not mutually 
exclusive, harmonic justice is the appropriate form since by it honours are 
given not in accordance with the status of persons, but with their