ABSTRACT
This chapter rethinks the nature of intellectual exchange between the English and Dutch republics and discusses the ways in which the concept of popular government radicalized in the 1650s and 1660s by looking at the Anglo-Dutch discursive background to the views of James Harrington, Pieter de la Court and Benedictus Spinoza. It discusses the close connection between balance and popular government, against those who would either want to defend monarchy or prefer other ways of organizing a republic. The chapter explores on monarchy, balance and cake division come together, and there is another accession to the cause of peace and concord, which is also of great weight, the author mean, that no citizen can have immovable property. The first was the sudden rise of Cartesian philosophy, their brother-in-law was Adriaan Heereboord, the Leiden philosopher and metaphysician who was highly instrumental in propagating the new philosophy.
