of the original and inalienable prerogatives of the generality, and the innate and indestructible right of the individual to freedom; the thought that the sovereign power is superior to positive law (princeps legibus solutus), but subordinate to natural law; even tendencies toward the division of powers (legislative and executive), and the representative system. These are germs which, at the fall of Scholasticism and the ecclesiastical reformation, gain light and air for free development.
The modern theory of natural law, of which Grotius was the most influential representative, began with Bodin and Althusius. The former conceives the contract by which the state is founded as an act of unconditional submission on the part of the community to the ruler, the latter conceives it merely as the issue of a (revocable) commission: in the view of the one, the sovereignty of the people is entirely alienated, "transferred," in that of the other, administrative authority alone is granted, "conceded," while the sovereign prerogatives remain with the people. Bodin is the founder of the theory of absolutism, to which Grotius and the school of Pufendorf adhere, though in a more moderate form, and which Hobbes develops to the last extreme. Althusius, on the other hand, by his systematic development of the doctrine of social contract and the inalienable sovereignty of the people, became the forerunner of Locke[1] and Rousseau.
The first independent political philosopher of the modern period was Nicolo Machiavelli of Florence (1469-1527). Patriotism was the soul of his thinking, questions of practical politics its subject, and historical fact its basis.[2] He is entirely unscholastic and unecclesiastical. The power and independence of the nation are for him of supreme importance, and the greatness and unity
- ↑ Ulrich Huber (1674) may be called the first representative of constitutionalism, and so the intermediate link between Althusius and Locke. Cf. Gierke, Althusius, p. 290.
- ↑ In his Essays on the First Decade of Livy (Discorsi), Machiavelli investigates the conditions and the laws of the maintenance of states; while in The Prince (Il Principe, 1515), he gives the principles for the restoration of a ruined state. Besides these he wrote a history of Florence, and a work on the art of war, in which he recommended the establishment of national armies.
