Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

"I have written to your brother as you wished, but I see no hope of the emperor's pension unless I return thither. For the matter was once for all brought up in council and the reply was made me in the name of the Lady Margaret that both the pension and other things worthy of me were ready for me if I would come back. So I do not think that your brother, eloquent and earnest patron as he is, ought to be wearied with this affair. The emperor has twice ordered the pension to be paid to me out of course, but he is more easily obeyed when he orders a tax than when he commands a payment."

We cannot for a moment believe that the holding of this honourary title required any personal attendance at the royal court which hindered Erasmus' freedom of motion when he desired to move. The principal fruit of his appointment was the little treatise called the Institutio Principis Christiani,[117] written, probably, in acknowledgment of the honour and dedicated to the young prince. This very amiable bit of advice is a companion-piece to the panegyric upon the prince's father written about twelve years before. It is unlike that early performance in being almost entirely free from exaggerated personal adulation; it is like it in the freedom with which it lays down for the guidance of the prince rules of conduct similar to those which ought to govern the individual Christian man in his dealings with the world of his fellow-men. Yet the principles are not the mere commonplaces of morality. The prince ought to be a good man in the Christian meaning of that term, but not merely good, as any private man might be. Erasmus has at every point a reason for the particular exercise of virtue he may be commending, and his illustrations, drawn chiefly from the best rulers of antiquity, are pertinent and show, of course, the widest and readiest command of the ancient literatures. To estimate aright the significance and value of Erasmus' declarations on public policy, we must remember that we are dealing with a contemporary of Macchiavelli, whose Principe, with its total indifference to the moral point of view, was already written and undoubtedly in circulation in manuscript, though not printed until 1532. Whether it was known to Erasmus we cannot say. If it was, he could hardly have made a more complete reply to it than this. Macchiavelli took the world as it was, especially that Italian part of it which he knew best, and, assuming that the process of state-building which he saw going on all about him was to continue along similar lines, he simply laid down the principles of success in that process. Erasmus, on the other hand, assuming that human society was a moral organism, was not concerned chiefly with outward or momentary success, but rather with the higher moral function of the ruler. He believed that success founded upon morality would be higher and more enduring than that which rested upon mere expediency. The central point of view with Macchiavelli was the person of the prince; Erasmus thought of the prince only as the servant of his people. Both drew, or thought they drew, their inspiration from classic tradition; but Macchiavelli sought for his illustrations at those points of ancient history where his principles seemed to be worked out into great and enduring political structures, while Erasmus drew from the decay of precisely the same institutions his lesson of the permanence of moral obligation and of that alone.

Perhaps the best and most pertinent example of his method of treatment is found in the chapter on taxation. It will be evident that the questions which were disturbing his mind have not yet ceased to agitate the world. Substitute for "prince" the word "government," and it will appear that most of the financial problems of our present day were burning questions in the days of Erasmus and Thomas More; for in More's Utopia we have in the main the same moral elevation applied to the same questions as in the Institutio. Erasmus says[118]:

"The ancient writers tell us that many rebellions have arisen from immoderate taxation. The good prince ought therefore to see to it that the minds of his people should be as little as possible disturbed by these matters. Let him if possible govern without expense to them. The office of the prince is too lofty to be used for money-making. The good prince has for his own whatever his loving subjects have. There have been many heathen who put nothing into their treasuries from serving the state save glory alone; and some, like Fabius Maximus and Antoninus Pius, despised even this. How much more, then, ought the Christian prince to be satisfied with the consciousness of rectitude, especially since he serves a Master who leaves no good deed without ample reward. There are men who busy themselves with nothing but finding out new devices for cheating the people, and think they are best serving the prince by making themselves the enemies of his subjects. Let him who listens to them know that he is far from the true ideal of a prince.

"The very best way to increase the revenue is to cut off unnecessary expense, doing away with burdensome service, avoiding wars and journeys that are like wars, checking the greed of officials, and trying rather to govern well what the prince has, than to get more. Otherwise, if he is to measure his taxes by his greed or his ambition, what limit or end of taxation will there be? For desire is infinite and is always pressing and straining at what it has once begun until, according to the old proverb, the overdrawn rope will break and the exhausted patience of the people burst forth into rebellion, whereby the most powerful empires have been ruined.

"But, if necessity demands that something shall be exacted of the people, then it is the part of a good prince to do it in such a way that the least burden may fall upon those who have least. For it may be a good thing to summon the rich to frugality, but to compel the poor to hunger and the gallows is not merely inhuman, but dangerous as well.... Let him well ponder this, that an expense once incurred at some emergency as pertaining to the advantage of the prince or the nobility, can never be abolished. When the emergency is past, not only ought the burden to be taken from the people, but the outlay of that former period ought, as far as possible, to be remedied and made good. Let him who cares for his people beware of the corrupt precedent. If he rejoices in the calamity of his own citizens or gives no thought to it, he is as far as can be from being a prince, no matter by what name he is called.

"It ought to be provided for that there be not too great inequality of wealth;—not that I would have anyone deprived of his goods by force, but that care should be taken lest the wealth of the whole community be limited to a certain few. For Plato would have his citizens neither too rich nor too poor, because the poor man cannot be of profit to the state, and the rich man, after his kind, does not want to profit it. Nor do princes even gain wealth by exactions of this sort. If anyone would prove this, let him consider how much less his ancestors took from their subjects, how much more they gave, and yet how much more of everything they had, because a great part of these present taxes slips between the fingers of those who collect and receive them, but only a very small part ever gets to the prince himself.

"Then, whatever things are in common use by the mass of the people, these a good prince will tax as lightly as possible, as for example, corn, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and other things without which human life cannot go on. But now these things are especially burdened, and that in many different ways: first, by the very heavy exactions of the contractors which the people call assizes, then by duties which have also their contractors, and finally by monopolies which bring little to the prince, but crush the poor by higher prices.

"So then, as I have said, let the income of the prince be increased by economy, according to the old proverb: 'Thrift is a great revenue.' But if some duties cannot be avoided and the interest of the people demands it, then let the burden fall upon foreign and outlandish wares, which have to do rather with the luxury and refinements of life than with necessity, and which are used by the rich alone, as for example, fine linen, silks, purple, perfumes, unguents, gems, and everything of that sort. For this burden is felt only by those whose fortunes can bear it and who by these payments are not reduced to want, but perchance are rendered more frugal, so that by loss of money, good morals are improved."

It would be going too far to say that these economic and financial views of Erasmus are purely original; they are doubtless gathered from his reading of the ancients, especially from Plato and Aristotle; they are, however, addressed with perfect directness to evils of his own time and they show us that his mind was working upon matters of large public import, as well as upon his more purely scholarly interests.