THE NOBLE DEMOCRACY 279tutional monarchy, which would display 'the legitimate power of the prince
over the people', he likened the Polish Republic to Venice. Echoes of his opin-
ions were heard throughout the seventeenth century. Sir James Harrington's
Oceana (1659) invoked the Polish example to embellish his dream of a Utopia
organized in the interests of propertied gentlemen; Ulryk Huber, the Dutchman,
used it in De iure Civitatis (1673) to demonstrate the fallacies of Hobbes. In
Germany, a tract on Polish politics was composed by the mathematician and
philosopher, Gottfied Leibniz when employed as secretary to the ambassador of
the Duke of Neuberg at the Royal election of 1669. Masquerading as 'Georgius
Ulicovius Lithuanus', he was mainly concerned to further the candidacy of his
employer, and took care that his Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro
elegendo rege Tolonorum (1669) would not offend the Polish electorate. Even
so, his arguments for the need to restrain liberty in the interests of external
security, and his interesting comparison of the principle of unanimity as con-
ceived in Poland and in the United Provinces, are ample proof of his serious
intentions. In Italy, praise for Poland rose from the depths of a Neapolitan dun-
geon. Tommaso Campanella, a Dominican friar incarcerated for twenty-seven
years for heresy, author of the 'City of the Sun', included a long passage on the
Republic in his work De Monarchia Hispanica. Most surprisingly, perhaps, he
composed a sonnet in honour of the Polish electors, urging them to prefer native
virtue before foreign princely blood:
To Poland
High o'er those realms that make blind chance the heir
Of Empire, Poland dost thou lift thy head:
For while thou mournest for thy monarch dead
Thou wilt not let his son the sceptre bear
Lest he prove weak perchance to do or dare.
Yet art thou even more by luck misled,
Choosing a prince of fortune, courtly bred,
Uncertain whether he will spend or spare.
Oh quit this pride! In hut or shepherd's pen
Seek Cato, Minos, Numa! For of such
God still makes kings in plenty: and these men
Will squander little substance and gain much,
Knowing that virtue and not blood shall be
Their titles to true immortality.^28In the Saxon Era, the quality of political comment degenerated as surely as the
political situation itself. In Poland, intelligent men held their tongues. The realm
of political theory was abandoned to the ostrich-like apostles of the 'Golden
Freedom'. In a world where would-be reformers recoiled before the over-
whelming odds of foreign coercion and internal strife, no challenge was offered
to those 'Sarmatists' who pretended that Poland's condition was superior to
that of any other country on earth. The prime quotations of Sarmatist opinions
are to be found in the amazing encyclopaedia of the Revd. Benedykt