181
CHC 1: 102a; TTP 1: 253b-254a; LA 2: 126b.
182
[José de] Cadalso, Cartas marruecas, ed. Juan Tamayo y Rubio (Clásicos castellanos), lxxxix (219-220), Madrid, 1950.
183
Memoria sobre los espectáculos y diversiones públicas de España (1790), O 1: 492b; HCS, 92. In Espectáculos 1: 502a n. 13 Jovellanos translates from HCS, 35-36. Cf. Bacon, Of the true greatness of kingdoms and estates, Essays, ed. Wright, 119-122, quoted by Heckscher, 2: 45. Bacon, however, calls for a martial character, while Ferguson and Jovellanos have something else in mind.
184
Discurso... sobre el establecimiento de un montepío para los nobles de la corte (1784), O 2: 14b-15a.
185
O 4: 185. Such observations do not lead Jovellanos simply to condemn the nobility and idolize «the people». In the village of Novellana, Jovellanos finds that the hidalgos occupy preferential places in the church with the tacit consent of the commoners, who in their turn exclude the vaqueros de alzada, an outcast ethnic group, from the church altogether, forcing them to receive communion at the door. This situation leads him to exclaim: «¡Cuándo querrá el Cielo vengar a la mayor parte del género humano de tan escandalosas y ridículas distinciones! Me avergüenzo de vivir en un país que las ha criado y las fomenta; pero al cabo, la razón vengará algún día las injurias que hoy recibe de la ignorancia» (D 26.vii.92, 1: 309-310). On the vaqueros or vaqueiros de alzada see also the 9th letter to Ponz, O 2: 302-308.
186
Montepío 2: 14a. Cf. LA 2: 106b; Cadalso, Cartas marruecas, lxix: «las accidentales circunstancias de lo que llaman nacimiento».
187
LA 2: 105b. Cabarrús, Cartas, iv, bitterly attacks hereditary nobility; including the presumption that the nobles enjoy a superior education. Cartas político-económicas, 215-217, admits the need for hierarchies in society but condemns as chimerical all hierarchies based on birth. All men are as alike as one egg and another except for the differences created by education. It is on these differences, however, that Jovellanos relies.
188
Montesquieu, V: ix. Cf. Campomanes, Educación, 33. Cabarrús, however, who favors the gradual abolition of hereditary nobility, denies that it has any balancing effect and prefers, for this purpose an elective chamber of true notables (Cartas, iv). The author of the Cartas político-económicas is also skeptical: the idea that hereditary nobility is the support of monarchy is generally held by those interested in its preservation, not by impartial philosophers (268).
189
Montepío 2: 16b. Cf. O 1: 285b; LA 2: 106.
190
See Francisco Ayala, Jovellanos sociólogo, CABA, 291-292, on the harmony between the Enlightenment as the work of a select minority and the conservative concept of an aristocracy of social function, in keeping with Jovellanos' conservative orientation.