One of the distinguishing features of the eighteenth century was the critical spirit with which it approached the entire body of knowledge which it had inherited from previous ages. Ancient authority was no longer sufficient to establish the truth of long-received propositions; everything on earth-and, in some instances, a good deal beyond it -was submitted to questioning and new investigation. In the natural sciences this process took the form of a break with the Aristotelian tradition and led to the construction of new systems based on direct observation and reason, of which the classifications of Linnaeus may serve as an example. The men of the Enlightenment were not, however, content with probing only the physical phenomena of their world; impressed by the advances of the scientific method in these fields, they acted on a presumed analogy between the realm of nature and that of man, and sought to discover the system of «laws» which would explain human thought and behavior. If an immutable order governed the physical universe, with or without the direction of the Divine Geometer, a similar order must underlie the ofttimes confusing universe of human activity; and the discovery of this order would allow men to classify, predict, and control such activity for the moral as well as material improvement of the species.
Just as the physicists and chemists of the age were forced to break with millenary tradition, therefore, students of what we now call the political or social sciences began to seek and build upon new foundations for their investigations. In Spain, the study of politics, like so many others, had formerly been based on Aristotle and theology, with an admixture of Roman law; but in the reign of Charles III the new tendencies were given official recognition by the establishment of cátedras de derecho público, natural y de gentes. The first of these new chairs was created in 1771 in the Reales Estudios de San Isidro, which the state, upon the expulsion of the Jesuits, undertook to make a model of the new learning. Attendance at the lectures given from this chair was compulsory; and with the support of the enlightened despotism of Charles, similar chairs were established in several universities, the strongholds, as in other countries, of the old learning. Under the royal aegis modern theorists of natural law and public law found their way into the intellectual life of Spain. Comparative study of political institutions -that is, of the observable facts of political life- was encouraged, while political thought was emancipated from the dogmas of the Greco-Roman tradition. Even when the government of Charles IV, frightened by developments north of the Pyrenees, moved to preserve Spain from suspect and potentially subversive novelerías by abolishing the chairs and the teaching of their subjects (1794), no return to the safety of old ways was really possible for educated and enlightened Spaniards. The new studies were not, in fact discontinued; they had become a part of the intellectual heritage of Spain's select minority176.
The destruction of ancient prejudices and of the systems founded upon them is, however, a negative work; and once this work is accomplished, the critic of the old can easily become the law-giver of the new. Descriptive historical study can become normative in its turn, and the dogmas of reason then replace the dogmas of other authority. Out of the study of the bewildering complexity and variety of political life arises the desire for an absolute standard. There must be an ideal system of laws; and if it is ideal, it must be the same for all nations, though their methods of reaching it may differ. Since ultimately men are the same everywhere, the task of the political writer must be to rise above multiplicity to the discovery of the perfect system. In this way, politics is once more divorced from history and for some it becomes a «science», with its unchangeable principles and «laws», paralleling the simplicity and stability of the new physics.
This, however, is not what politics means to Jovellanos. His acute sense of history and his eminently practical spirit do not allow him to abstract political theories from the circumstances in which they must be applied; and during his first exile in Gijón he tells his students at the Real Instituto Asturiano that
| (CHC 1: 102a) | ||
Politics is not nearly so important as economics, which Jovellanos proceeds to praise.
Prior to this time, Jovellanos had been concerned with politics only in a speculative way. The reign of Charles III had been stable and relatively tranquil, and Jovellanos had served only in positions which though honorable and even important were not positions of command or great responsibility. All this was to change within the next twenty years; the tide of events was to propel Jovellanos first into prison, then into power, and finally into an unhappy retirement. The aggression of Bonaparte, the abject grovelling of two princes of the house of Bourbon, and the impassioned uprising of Spain's people precipitated a constitutional crisis and forced Jovellanos, as one of the leaders of Spanish resistance, to concern himself more intimately than ever before with political questions, which now took precedence over projects for roads, mines, and canals. Our author's major political writings belong to this last period of his life. Like his economic writings they are not a systematic exposition of doctrine but rather attempts to cope with practical problems. From these discussions we must extract the essentials of Jovellanos' political thought.
Jovellanos had now reached the final stage in his intellectual development; his political writings are the full fruit of his readings, meditations, and experience. At this time, also, he was more than ever intellectually oriented toward England. Not only had the readings of his mature years included many of the salient British authors of the eighteenth century: history itself had strengthened the bonds of sympathy and admiration. For twenty years France had been the scene of tumult and violence. Though Jovellanos may well have accepted some of the guiding principles of the early Revolution, as a humane reformer he could not but feel revulsion at the methods used to carry out these principles; and he, the aristocrat and faithful servant of the Bourbons, had lived to see Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity lead to the despotism of an obscure upstart for whom he expresses only hatred and contempt. During all this time Britain had resisted the storm that was sweeping Europe, and now she was Spain's ally in the struggle against foreign invasion. It was only natural for Jovellanos to feel increasing kinship with Britain, although he was far from ingenuous in his appraisal of British motives. The friendship of Lord Holland intensified these feelings. Suspected, insulted, and mistreated by his own countrymen, Jovellanos enjoyed the support, advice, and admiration of the Hispanophile peer who offered him asylum at Holland House.
Even in this final period, however, when politics was his major concern, Jovellanos maintains his old ideas about its «scientific» pretensions. Only three months before his death he writes to Lord Holland:
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Los principios son siempre ciertos; pero la política no es una ciencia, ni por consiguiente tiene principios; sus máximas pueden ser siempre ciertas en la teórica, pero no siempre en su aplicación. |
| (O 4: 478a) | ||
The same thought is expressed in his «political testament», the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central (1810): politics,
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no siendo propiamente una ciencia, porque nada hay en ella demostrado, da el nombre de principios a ciertas sabias máximas, que han logrado mayor aceptación entre sus profesores. |
| (O 1: 548 a) | ||
What, in Jovellanos' opinion, these principles or maxims are we shall now see through an examination of his discussions of various political theories and practices. As we do so, we shall compare his thought to that of other authors, particularly those English ones who most influenced his thinking.
Eighteenth-century political theorists asked whether man could exist or had ever existed outside society; and their answers to this question were of more than academic significance, since on them rested further debates about the rights of men, natural and independent of society or derived from society itself and therefore modifiable by it. Some saw the origin of society in a more or less formal agreement, variously denominated pact, compact, or contract; others saw society as coetaneous with man himself and conceived of its development in organic rather than formal or legal terms.
The best-known and most influential member of the former group, at least in Spain, was John Locke177.
In the second of his Two Treatises o f Government, Locke postulates the original freedom, equality, and independence of all men, adding that they can lose this natural liberty only by consenting to the formation of a community. This consent, the social compact, creates society; and on it the authority of all lawful governments is based. Such a development is itself perfectly natural, since man needs and seeks the society of his fellow men; but before entering on the social compact, man lives in a state of nature, which, though inconvenient and therefore rare, is for Locke a historical reality (TG, 295-296, 336 ff, 348 ff, 370). Montesquieu, who in the Esprit des lois is little concerned with the origin of society, also assumes that this origin can be traced to some unspecified point in time, prior to which man lived in «l'état de nature» (I: ii).
This position is challenged by Adam Ferguson in An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Ferguson, after decrying those theories which «overlook what [man] has always appeared within the reach of our own knowledge, and in the records of history», declares that since all accounts of man show him existing in society, the social state must be considered as much a part of his nature as his use of reason and speech. «MANKIND are to be taken in groups, as they have always subsisted» (I: i). Society and government, important as they are, need not arise from some great motive leading at any given time to their formation; instead, they are the inevitable and spontaneous product of all of man's propensities, so that «it is absurd to entitle that the state of nature to which men are not naturally disposed, and in which they most certainly never were known».178 If this is so, the «social compact» is likewise a fiction, subsequent to the actual establishment of society and of no use in explaining the laws of nature179. Drawing on Montesquieu, Ferguson in his Essay sees successive stages of human societies, beginning with primitive hunters and fishers, such as the «noble savages» of North America, which have only a limited concept of property, and proceeding through the «barbaric» stage of herdsmen toward the more complex modern society (II: ii-iii). This view excludes a pre-social state and denies the pre-social nature of property.
Adam Smith also sees a progression from a society of hunters, in which fortunes are equal, to one of shepherds, where inequality becomes marked, and on to societies of «husbandmen» and manufacturers; and while he associates the beginnings of government with the inequality of wealth arising in the second stage, he nowhere assumes that man has lived in a pre-social state (WN, 672- 674).
Jovellanos mentions a state of nature in passages defending governmental regulation of property rights (e. g., LA 2: 103b), but his position is generally non Lockeian. He considers property the creature of society, which can therefore modify it to promote the general interest, while for Locke property is anterior to society, since «government has no other end but the preservation of Property».180 An autograph draft of a passage in the Informe de ley agraria refers to the «pacto social», but this reference is eliminated in the final version (MSA 2; LA 2: 127a [1795 ed., §367]). When Jovellanos speaks specifically of the state of nature, he does so only to deny its existence:
| (TTP 1: 253a) | ||
These words recall Sir Robert Filmer's, quoted by Locke himself (TG, 273), to the effect that the state of nature is «a fiction, or fancy» of those who follow «the opinions of philosophers and poets». Jovellanos elaborates his position in an unpublished letter dating from 1796 or 1797:
| (MSC 3, no. 58, ltr. 7) | ||
Jovellanos envisages the growth of social organization from the smallest unit, the family, to the largest, leading eventually to the establishment of a universal society. This development is caused primarily by men's desire to define (determinar) their natural obligations and preserve their natural rights, but also by their need to cope with natural obstacles and dangers. Jovellanos' exposition of these ideas is at times ambiguous. Expressions such as «los hombres no se reunieron para sacudirlos» and «Tal fue el origen de la sociedad civil» suggest that society had a beginning; but since else where Jovellanos specifically denies the historicity of a pre-social state of nature, they may be explained by the natural tendency to give causes a temporal priority over their effects. The contradiction can be resolved by supposing that the causes which Jovellanos assigns for the origin of society have always existed in man and forced him from his beginnings to live in societies. The same causes subsequently led to the expansion of societies, as men discovered that the advantages of small groupings could be increased by increasing the size of the groupings; but while society is thus thought of as capable of improvement, it is not capable of being invented since it is coeval with man himself. Jovellanos, then, adheres in essence to Ferguson's explanation of the origin and growth of social organization181.
The postulation of a state of nature antedating the establishment of society makes it possible to speak also of natural rights existing in that state and therefore not derived from social organization. The rights to «Life, Liberty and Estate» which Locke subsumes under the heading of Property are examples of such natural rights, since in the Lockeian view society exists to guarantee these rights but does not create them. Once this is accepted, it becomes possible to appeal to natural rights in an effort-to correct the abuses allegedly introduced by society and by government; and such an appeal is in fact made by Rousseau and other precursors and de fenders of the French Revolution. Thomas Paine, for instance, derives civil rights from natural rights: man has only entered into society to secure his natural rights; and while the individual must partially surrender them to society in order to constitute the civil power, that power can never be used to invade the remainder (Rights of Man 1: 25-27). The rights and obligations of natural law thus take precedence over those established by civil society.
The example of Hobbes shows that this is not the only possible interpretation of the relation between natural and social obligations. Hobbes believes in the historical existence of a state of nature in which, however, the natural laws, by which he means such obligations as justice and gratitude, are unenforceable; they receive sanction and validity from society or «common wealth» established for the preservation of men (Leviathan, xv, xvii).
For Jovellanos the evils of society exist in men, not in institutions; and the attempt to remedy them by abolishing society is therefore a «most monstrous error», an absurdity produced by the malevolent hypocrisy of «una secta feroz y tenebrosa». The wish to return to a hypothetical state of nature
| (TTP 1: 254a-255a) | ||
The same attack had already been made by Cadalso, who through Nuño Núñez speaks of those who claim that
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en la igualdad natural de los hombres es vicioso el establecimiento de las jerarquías. Que el estado natural del hombre es la soledad, como la de la fiera en el monte. Los que no ahondamos tanto en las especulaciones, no podemos determinarnos a dejar las ciudades de Europa y pasar a vivir con los hotentotes, patagones, araneos, iroqueses, apalaches y otros tales pueblos, que parece más conforme a la naturaleza, según el sistema de estos filósofos, o lo que sean.182 |
If the state of nature is a fiction and the evils of society cannot be remedied by any pretended return to it, an appeal to natural rights independent of society is invalid. No rights can-ne derived from a state in which man has never existed; and these pretended rights are thus as chimerical as the state of nature itself. Man does have natural rights and obligations; but he has them within the framework of the only kind of existence which is natural to him, i. e., in society (TTP 1: 255).
We thus see that in spite of occasional deviations or ambiguities, Jovellanos adheres to an organic concept of the origin of society. For him, society is a necessary part of human nature. It exists, changes, and develops not as a result of formal decisions and pacts, but in a way analogous to the growth and development of living beings. This concept is reflected in his view of the nature of society in general and of the nature of the Spanish society and state in particular. It manifests itself also in his hostility toward those who denying this organic development would «return» to an earlier and presumably purer condition, and in his consistently skeptical approach to revolutionary political theories. If society has grown necessarily and conjointly with man kind, it is no more possible suddenly to graft onto humanity an entirely new form of society than it is to abolish society altogether.
Society is composed of individuals and derives its force from them; but how is the power of the individual transferred to the social body? For Locke, «a Man is naturally free from subjection to any Government, though he be born in a place under its jurisdiction» (TG, 412); and society is therefore not only the result of an original compact but depends for its continued existence on a constantly renewed compact which every individual is free to accept or reject.
At times Jovellanos seems similarly to speak of a voluntary association, as when he declares:
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Ninguno ha renunciado de su libertad natural, sino aquella parte que es absolutamente necesaria para conservar el Estado sin menoscabo de la propia conservación |
| (O 2: 36a) | ||
or when he defines society as «una gran compañía, en que cada uno pone sus fuerzas y sus luces, y las consagra al bien de los demás» (O 1: 333b). These texts date from 1785 and 1797, respectively; but in his Tratado teórico-práctico de enseñanza (1802), Jovellanos holds that the power of the state is composed of sacrifices of individual freedom, strength, and wealth, that the state must guarantee to the individual that part of his force which he does not surrender, but that the surrender must be made by the individual «por el hecho solo de nacer o pertenecer a ella [society]» (1: 256a). The earlier statements may to some extent be figurative, while this one is certainly not; but even if the former are to be taken literally, the general trend of Jovellanos' thinking is away from the Lockeian position and toward that espoused by Ferguson. Not only is society the natural state of man in general, but it is also the natural and necessary state of each individual man.
For Jovellanos, however, individuals are held together in society not only by its necessity but also by moral bonds. «El amor público» is the «virtud primordial del hombre civil»; it unites the members of society in the knowledge of their rights and duties and is the true source of the strength of the state (TTP 1: 256b). This stress on amor público as the source of the common good has been compared to the Thomist doctrine that iustitia legalis (the giving to the community of what rightfully belongs to it) is the source of bonum commune (Villota, 76-79). Justice, however, is not exactly what Jovellanos means by amor público. In his Discurso sobre los medios de promover la felicidad de Asturias, he tells the Economic Society of his native province:
| (O 2: 438b-439a) | ||
Benevolence, more than a strict justice of suum cuique, is the main ingredient of this political virtue; and in the fashion of the period benevolence produces a sentimental reaction in the benefactor. When Jovellanos formulates this concept of amor de la patria in 1781 he may already know Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, which he reads for the third time in 1796. Ferguson, like Jovellanos, adduces a sentimental morality as the basis of civil society. According to him a «moral sentiment» inclines men naturally to good in spite of all talk of interest, and men find their greatest joys in following their benevolent impulses and acting for the good of others and of the public. Man's essentially social nature creates a reciprocal relationship between the individual and society: the individual's chief goal must be the public good, and his happiness is in turn «the great end of civil society». These aims are easily combined, for the individual is happiest when working for the common good (HCS, I: vi-ix).
A benevolent sentiment being the cement of society, the power of a state can be thought of as depending largely on the character of its inhabitants:
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... el poder y la fuerza de un estado no consiste tanto en la muchedumbre y en la riqueza, cuanto y principalmente en el carácter moral de sus habitantes. |
Here also we see an almost literal reflection of Ferguson:
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Notwithstanding the advantage of numbers, and superior resources in war, the strength of a nation is derived from the character, not from the wealth, nor from the multitude of its people.183 |
According to Jovellanos, laws should therefore try to make men good, as they have tried to make them proud, brave, or rich; but by punishing crime without rewarding virtue, they have propagated a negative and unattractive concept of virtue (O 5: 414). Ferguson is similarly interested in making virtue attractive: in our zeal to distinguish selfish from benevolent actions, we tend to make men forget «that the same person may reap a greater advantage from the good fortune he has promoted to another, than from that he has obtained for himself» (HCS, 79-80). Government, furthermore, can through its laws encourage virtue rather than simply punish vice; hence Ferguson's admiration for the ancient Spartans, the only people who «made virtue an object of state» (HCS, III: vi). Though Jovellanos would not welcome the sumptuary laws which Ferguson praises, he agrees with him that the moral betterment of mankind is the proper concern of government.
Once man lives in society, either by nature or as the result of a compact, what becomes of his rights and obligations? Locke distinguishes between natural law and positive law; the former operates in society as well as in the state of nature, and is reinforced by positive law (TG, 376). Natural rights are for Locke anterior to civil rights and separate from them. Among Jovellanos' friends, Cabarrús unequivocally accepts this view society is the result of a social contract entered into for the protection of security and property, which, being anterior to the contract, are untouchable (Cartas, 9 ff).
Jovellanos himself, however, gradually moves away from this position. In a memorandum to his colleague Saavedra he defends governmental regulation of property by arguing that since all property rights derive from and are maintained by the civil authority, they may be moderated and regulated by it in the interests of society (D 2: 458-459). Subsequently, he refers to «la propiedad, la libertad, la seguridad y todos los bienes que puede afianzar una sociedad a sus individuos» (MJC 1: 514a); and in this we may see an extension of the argument concerning property in the narrow sense to property in the broader Lockeian sense. These rights are «guaranteed» by society; they seem, in fact, to be considered as the creations of society.
In practice Jovellanos is probably not very far from Locke. Their positions are in this respect reconcilable, although their emphases differ. Locke conceives of natural liberty as exemption from all but nature's laws, and of liberty in society as freedom to do as one wishes within the limits prescribed by an impartial and non arbitrary law. Freedom is fully possible only with law, which protects us from the arbitrary violence of others (TG, 301-302, 323-324). Jovellanos sees rights and liberties so modified that they are in effect the creations of society. He could subscribe without hesitation to Ferguson's statement that
| (Moral Phil., 266) | ||
Locke knows that liberty is conditioned by society; but he stresses the liberties remaining to man within the social framework, while Ferguson sees liberty deriving from society and therefore taking the form society gives it. For him there is no conflict between liberty and order, because liberty is conceivable only as part of the order of society.
On one occasion in 1793 Jovellanos speaks of the original equality which nature and religion establish among men, but in terms more ethical than political (O 4: 185b). Coming to deal with this question specifically on a later occasion, he declares that the belief in the natural freedom and equality of all men is only sophistry. Men, he asserts, are born unequal and subject to authority since hierarchy and the consequent inequality are essential to the existence of society. The true meaning of the axiom that all men are born free and equal is therefore only this: that all men are free to do as they please within the limits of the law, and that all men are equal before the law.
| (TTP 1: 256a) | ||
Jovellanos shares with Locke and Ferguson the belief in the modification of natural rights by society; but for Jovellanos, as for Ferguson, the idea of such rights unmodified by society is pure speculation -sophistry or chimaera- while for Locke, who believes in the state of nature, it represents realities which can be appealed to even by the man living in society.
The natural equality or inequality of men is involved in Jovellanos' treatment of the question of nobility; and since these discussions illustrate his concept of society, we shall examine them in some detail.
The legal distinction between nobles and commoners reflects the structure of medieval society, in which the existence of three classes -clergy, nobles, and peasants- rested on necessity rather than reason. The warrior class was a link between the sovereign and the people, defending the former and supporting the latter184. Jovellanos recognizes that the medieval noble may often have been little better than a robber (D 2: 396); but since his function in society was military, his amusements, values, virtues, and vices were military as well. The caste to which he belonged should be judged not according to absolute standards but with full consciousness of historical differences (Espectáculos 1: 486a).
The same considerations that lead Jovellanos to be indulgent with medieval nobility, however, make him severe with the aristocrats of his own day. The vices of the feudal baron resulted at least partly from his fulfilling his function in society; but what is the function of the modern noble, and how is he fulfilling it? Jovellanos sharply criticizes him, though he blames misguided policy for the corruption of individuals:
| (Espectáculos 1: 496b) | ||
If the modern noble is a useless, possibly even a pernicious member of society, it is at least in part because society, without leveling him with the mass, has deprived him of his function. In Ortegan terms, his peculiar uselessness stems from his being neither mass nor guiding élite: not the former because he retains much of his wealth and privileges, not the latter because he has been relieved of his obligations. As a result, he floats aimlessly through society, a type known to Spanish social critics since the Lazarillo.
In letters and diaries Jovellanos gives vent to some of his strongest criticism of the class to which he himself belongs. Thus in 1793 he writes to an author who wishes to satirize the nobility:
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El [vicio] más común es el de aquellos nobles que creyendo que el serlo los dispensa de toda obligación, ni se aplican, ni se instruyen, ni se hacen en manera alguna útiles a la sociedad; que creen que todos han nacido para servirlos y adorarlos; que las leyes no se han formado para ellos; que los ministros de la religión y la justicia no tienen derecho a castigarlos o reprenderlos; que sus casas deben ser un asilo de cuantos se acogen a su sombra; que el lujo y la ociosidad deben vivir con ellos; que la frugalidad y el trabajo son virtudes de la plebe; que son orgullosos, opresores, descorteses, tramposos, etc., y, en fin, que el lustre de su familia y de su nombre los autoriza para ser orgullosos, insolentes, opresores, tramposos y desarreglados.185 |
In other words, the modern noble is too prone to insist on his privileges while ignoring even those moral duties which society has left him. One result of this degeneracy is a growing cleavage between the upper and the lower classes of which Jovellanos, the sensitive observer, is acutely aware. As he is traveling by coach, he describes the popular reaction to an accident:
| (D 1: 226) | ||
These observations and these sentiments underlie Jovellanos' Second Satire, which after a sharply-drawn picture of the degeneracy of «un nono nieto del Rey Chico» concludes with the revolutionary lines:
| (Caso, Poesías, 253) | ||
These lines are a key to Jovellanos' attitude toward the nobility. He condemns its degeneracy, but he does not condemn the concept of nobility. The vision of the «humble mob» «usurping» rank and converting every thing into an «infamous confusion» is hardly flattery of the demos or the expression of leveling sentiments. On the other hand, class distinctions need to be justified, and the only justification is superior virtue. We return here to a medieval concept of the nobility as fulfilling a role in society, but with an eighteenth-century innovation: not military virtues, but Virtue, supports and justifies this special role.
Though nobility is an «accidental quality»186, not necessarily the result of individual excellence in those who possess it, it does, or at least should, produce such excellence:
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Es una verdad innegable que la virtud y los talentos no están vinculados al nacimiento ni a las clases, y que por lo mismo fuera una grave injusticia cerrar a algunas el paso a los servicios y a los premios. Sin embargo, es tan difícil esperar el valor, la integridad, la elevación de ánimo y las demás grandes cualidades que piden los grandes empleos de una educación oscura y pobre, o de unos ministerios cuyo continuo ejercicio encoge el espíritu, no presentándole otro estímulo que la necesidad, ni otro término que el interés, cuanto es fácil hallarlas en medio de la abundancia, del esplendor y aun de las preocupaciones de aquellas familias que están acostumbradas a preferir el honor a la conveniencia, y a no buscar la fortuna sino en la reputación y en la gloria.187 |
Education is once more seen as the key to the betterment of society, and when Jovellanos calls the Asturian nobles to his Institute he asks them to admit that education and virtue must be the sole supports of their rank:
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El pueblo que os mantiene necesita de vuestra dirección y vuestras luces. Si su desamparo no os moviere a socorrerle, muévaos a lo menos vuestro interés y el decoro de vuestra clase. Ya no sois, como en otro tiempo, los únicos apoyos de la seguridad nacional, ni los defensores de sus derechos, ni los intérpretes de su voluntad. Vuestros blasones, vuestros privilegios ya no se libran sobre tan firmes títulos; sólo el verdadero patriotismo, sólo la virtud, una virtud ilustrada y benéfica, pueden justificarlos y conservarlos. Venid, instruid al pueblo, socorredle, y recompensad con vuestras luces y consejos el continuo sudor que derrama sobre vuestras tierras; este sudor inocente y precioso, a quien debéis vuestro esplendor y vuestra misma existencia. |
| (Oración inaug. 1: 323a) | ||
The nobles, who are no longer the military and political leaders of the nation, must now be its intellectual and moral leaders; and Jovellanos minces no words in telling them that only by a return to the spirit of obligation and duty can they maintain their privileged position in society.
If they succeed in this, they benefit not only themselves but the state as well, since the monarchic state needs class distinctions to preserve the «balance» between crown and people. This balance is for Jovellanos, as for Montesquieu, a further justification of hereditary nobility188, which in order properly to fulfill its function must be exclusive and aristocratic. The new-rich must not be allowed to buy their way into the noble class; and noble rank is properly lost by various degrading acts, including trade or manual labor. «Bien sé yo que estas ideas sufrirán el anatema de la filosofía; pero ahora hablo como político».189Here ancient prejudice, which Jovellanos recognizes as such, is reinforced by modern political theory, specifically that of Montesquieu, who had written: «Il est contre l'esprit de la monarchie que la noblesse y fasse le commerce» (XX: xxi). Therefore Juderías errs when he claims that Jovellanos favored a «more natural and more logical» class structure which would encourage progress by permitting unlimited social mobility to newly acquired wealth (86). Jovellanos does see in the ability to acquire wealth a powerful stimulus to progress, but he does not confuse economic and political functions. Wealth seems to him a sufficient reward of industry; it does not justify the granting of aristocratic privileges and cannot alone produce the moral qualities and breeding which they demand190.
Wealth, though not synonymous with nobility, is, however, necessary to the maintenance of nobility and to the fulfillment of its social function. The feudal noble grew rich by proving his merit in war; but since this is impossible for the modern noble, other ways have been devised to ensure his ability to comply with the demands of his station. Hence institutions like entail and primogeniture, «que reprobarían a un mismo tiempo la razón y la política, si no se dirigiesen a conservar en las familias nobles una riqueza, un poderío, sin los cuales no se podrían llevar las distinciones de esta clase» (O 2: 16, 104b-105b). The same arguments, however, are used to condemn a proposed montepío for poor nobles. The poor noble, unable to preserve his patrimony and unwilling or unable so to serve the state as to gain a right to its support, should be allowed either to perish or to lose the rank whose demands he is unable to meet. In either case, he will be more useful than he would be as an incomplete noble. He will either teach others by his example, or he will become a useful working member of society, «siendo la nobleza una cualidad estéril, y la profesión del artista productiva para el Estado» (Montepío 2: 17-19). Two principles are thus involved in the discussion of nobility: its economic sterility and its political necessity. Jovellanos' practical solution is that rich nobles should be allowed to keep their wealth while being encouraged to assume intellectual and moral leadership. As to other nobles, an attitude of laissez faire is to be adopted: if they can maintain themselves by their usefulness, let them retain their rank; if they cannot, let them perish or become commoners. There are enough nobles already and the loss to the class of those who are unwilling or unable to fulfill its political function will damage society neither economically nor politically.
We have seen, however, that Jovellanos is willing in theory to abolish entails altogether, in spite of his public defense of the institutions necessary to maintain the wealth of the nobility. On occasion he is the practical reformer who recognizes the limits imposed by circumstances and who believes that the prevailing system of government requires a privileged upper class; at other times he is the political and economic thinker who would like to implement his principles, e. g., self-interest and private property. These aspects of Jovellanos' writings are neither insincere nor irreconcilable. Jovellanos justifies nobility in modern society only if it is a true aristocracy of talent and virtue, valuable as a «balancing» political force and as the leading element in society; but it can perform these functions only if those unable or unwilling to manage their own affairs are free to abdicate their rank. Furthermore, the end of entails need not mean the impoverishment of the noble class. The attack against them aims only at landed property and does not preclude the nobility's converting its wealth into other forms. The aristocracy might thus retain its inherited riches and power while transferring its territorial property to more productive hands.
Jovellanos' proposals concerning mayorazgos and montepíos indicate no aversion to the principle of nobility:
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... el dictamen que llevo insinuado, lejos de ser sugerido por alguna aversión a la nobleza, es inspirado por el mismo respeto que profeso a esta clase, contra la cual sería temeridad creer preocupado a un hombre que, habiendo nacido en una de las más antiguas familias de Asturias, y hallándose adornado con enlaces y distinciones que atestiguan el lustre de su cuna, debe estar a cubierto de la nota de parcialidad contra la misma clase que ocupa en el Estado. |
| (Montepío 2: 14a) | ||
There is no reason to question the frankness of this declaration: pride and aristocratic hauteur were among the very accusations brought against Jovellanos by his enemies.
For Jovellanos the rights and duties of the nobility and of other citizens can be discussed meaningfully only within the context of society. Rejecting any inherent superiority of the noble class, Jovellanos nevertheless considers it a necessary part of the social organism and assigns to it a function which, as we shall see, he proposes to institutionalize by adapting to Spain's needs the British constitutional tradition.
The age that concerned itself with the origin of society and discussed the notion of a social compact quite naturally turned its attention also to the origin of governments, the juridical basis for their existence, and their proper form. In the United States and revolutionary France this interest promoted debate on constitutional questions; and it also found echoes in Spain, where as the eighteenth century drew to a close the constitution increasingly became a topic of conversation and argument. Enlightened Spaniards looked back to the Middle Ages to find their constitution in its purity and vigor; and following the custom of Bourbon Spain, they blamed its decline and neglect on the Habsburgs191. The search for a constitution and the belief in its corruption and destruction at he hands of the House of Austria were one more way of explaining the «decadence» of Spain which so preoccupied a whole century.
A constitution may be considered as a legal document, as something made by an assembly of men at a specific time; but one can also see it as the result of processes extending over centuries, as the accretion of many individual acts and decisions, forming a continually changing body of law and custom. In general, the first of these two views seems to have appealed to the more revolutionary spirits. Thomas Paine, for instance, distinguishes between society. and government and finds the former perfectly conceivable without the latter, which owes its existence to a compact -not the compact creating society, but a second compact among the members of society establishing a government, «and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist». This compact is the constitution, which
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is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government. |
| (Rights of man 1: 28-29) | ||
Paine then proceeds to argue that England has no constitution, since no one can «produce» it. For Francis Hutcheson, «the only natural method of constituting or continuing of civil power must be some deed or convention of men», though Hutcheson, less positivistic than Paine, grants that this contract is usually not explicit (2: 226-227).
A different concept of a constitution underlies Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Although Bürke refers to the «pact of society», he does not intend this as a definition; when he speaks of the British and French constitutions, which according to the revolutionaries do not exist, he thinks of them in terms of the slow growth of institutions and custom192. A more explicit statement of this view is given by Ferguson: «No constitution is formed by concert, no government is copied from a plan» (HCS, 188). It is therefore absurd to imagine a primitive people suddenly realizing the disadvantageous conditions under which it lives and deciding to form a government. Instead, governmental institutions evolve gradually; and the origin of governments is an historical, not a legal problem. Ferguson therefore believes that all forms of government, excepting only despotism, may be justified by history and circumstances193. It is to this view that Jovellanos adheres.
Well before the constitutional crisis of 1808, Jovellanos discusses constitutional problems. He believes in the existence of a constitution, which for him is not a document, but the structure of society, including its classes, its political bodies, and its public offices (Calatrava [1790] 1: 213, §18). A letter dated 1795 shows further what Jovellanos means by a constitution: the distribution, rights, and functions of legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and the rights and duties of governors and governed. According to Jovellanos, these matters have not yet been seriously studied, as they must be, by reference to such historical documents as codes of law and chronicles (O 2: 147). The influence he concedes to climate is limited. He considers Montesquieu's opinions on this subject moderate but is more skeptical of them than Ferguson; like Godwin he stresses rather the formative influence of laws and the constitution itself on the character of a nation194. The sources of the constitution must therefore be sought not through geographical but through historical and legal studies.
While discussing these studies Jovellanos repeatedly complains of the exclusive attention given by Spanish universities to Roman law when the proper formation of a jurist demands, in his opinion, a very different sort of education: a thorough grounding in the humanities, logic, metaphysics, geometry, physics, ethics, economics, «derecho de gentes y público», and Spanish history-all of this only in preparation for the study of the national, not Roman, legal tradition. The study of history is the most important single part of this program, since only history can show the appropriateness and full meaning of laws and thus of the constitution (O 2: 152b; MSC 3, no. 21, ord. 318). Only with such preparation can the student of the laws see them in their historical context, understand to what extent they conform to the age which produced them, and penetrate in this fashion «el espíritu de las leyes». Like Montesquieu, Jovellanos defends the appropriateness of medieval laws to the times that produced them (O 1: 288 ff). He can sincerely execrate what he considers the ignorance and savagery of «una época tan funesta para la humanidad como vergonzosa a la sabiduría» (O 1: 319a); yet he tries with equal sincerity to understand the «spirit» of medieval laws and institutions and gives us sensitive and sympathetic sketches of them in the Memoria sobre los espectáculos y diversiones públicas de España and the Memoria del castillo de Bellver.
When viewed in its historical development, the Spanish constitution originates, according to Jovellanos, in the Fuero Juzgo, to which the Alfonsine Partidas unfortunately added the subtleties of Roman law195. The chief defects of this ancient constitution were the weakness of the crown, the concomitantly excessive power of the lords, and the reduction of the people to the level of «un rebaño de esclavos, destinado a saciar la ambición de sus señores» (O 1: 295; cf. O 1: 312b). Jovellanos finds this situation somewhat improved by the thirteenth century with the beginning and growth of popular representation in the Cores (O 1: 482-483); but the arrival of «reyes extranjeros» (the Habsburgs) corrupted and restricted the parliamentary systems of the Spanish kingdoms, allowing the Cortes only a shadow existence which
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a la entrada de los Borbones desapareció enteramente, para que, desplomándose el despotismo sobre la nación, acabase de abrumarla con tantos males como ha llorado, y la condujese a orilla del abismo en que ahora se halla. |
| (MJC 1: 515a) | ||
Jovellanos' early interest in such questions was that of a civil servant, magistrate, and patriot; Bonaparte's invasion of Spain and the Spanish reaction to it, however, propelled him into the midst of unprecedented political problems. As a member of the Suprema Junta Central Gubernativa de España e Indias, he suddenly became one of the rulers of Spain at a time of foreign attack and internal upheaval; and as a leading spirit in the Junta's Comisión de Cortes, he was particularly active in preparing the great and revolutionary work of convoking an unprecedented national parliament. As a result, political questions concerned Jovellanos as never before during these last years of his life, from the uprisings of 1808 to the disbandment of the Junta Central in 1810, and from that time until his death in November 1811. The outgrowth of this concern is Jovellanos' major political work, the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central, and the appendices to it (O 1: 503-622). In these pages we find the condensation of Jovellanos' political thought in its most mature form, even though they were written under the pressure of circumstances as an apologia for the junta and for the author's part in it. In this respect their importance is analogous to that of the Informe en el expediente de ley agraria for the study of Jovellanos' economic thought: both major works are not theoretical treatises but responses to specific situations. Their purpose is mainly practical, though each is the product of years of study and meditation. Our concern is primarily with the theoretical bases of these practical proposals.
In the Memoria and its appendices, as on previous occasions, Jovellanos affirms that Spain has a constitution, consisting of the fundamental laws fixing the rights of the sovereign and his subjects and the means of preserving these rights (1: 599a). Where the laws are silent, the constitution rests on «antigua y constante costumbre».
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Esta costumbre es la verdadera fuente de la constitución española, y en ella debe ser estudiada y por ella interpretada; porque ¿qué constitución hay en Europa, que no se haya establecido y formado por este mismo medio? |
| (1: 598b) | ||
This is the view of a constitution held by Burke and explicitly stated by Ferguson; it is the precise opposite of Paine's doctrine in the Rights of Man196. Jovellanos does not think of the constitution as an artificial creation but as something derived from and reflecting the whole life of a people, including its customs, its religion, and the climate in which it lives (MJC 1: 601b). With his great historical sense, he is therefore averse to revolutionary change. New institutions can be invented; but as Jovellanos tells his younger adviser and friend, Lord Holland, they cannot be grafted onto the trunk of history:
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Nadie más inclinado [que yo] a restaurar y afirmar y mejorar; nadie más tímido en alterar y renovar. Acaso este es ya un achaque de mi vejez. Desconfío mucho de las teorías políticas y más de las abstractas. Creo que cada nación tiene su carácter; que éste es el resultado de sus antiguas instituciones; que si con ellas se altera, con ellas se repara; que otros tiempos no piden precisamente otras instituciones, sino una modificación de las antiguas; que lo que importa es perfeccionar la educación y mejorar la instrucción pública: con ella no habrá preocupación que no caiga, error que no desaparezca, mejora que no se facilite. En conclusión: una nación nada necesita, sino el derecho de juntarse y hablar. Si es instruida, su libertad puede ganar siempre; perder, nunca. |
| (ltr. of 22.v.09, O 4: 377) | ||
Jovellanos considers society and governmental authority as natural conditions existing from the beginning of human history. Throughout the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central he recognizes that a government is responsible to society; the Memoria itself is a public accounting for his conduct and that of his colleagues. Within its sphere of operations, however, the government is supreme; Jovellanos adheres firmly to the eighteenth-century ideal of a strong centralized government. We see this not only in his rejection of a federal system for a country like Spain, but also in a previous sarcastic reference to the «idolatrados privilegios» of the province of Biscay and in the haughty terms in which he rejects protests against the authority of the government which he represents as a member of the Consejo de Órdenes:
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¿Quién ha dado al convento [de San Francisco] ni a los diputados [del común] el derecho de pensar mejor que tan autorizados cuerpos y personas? ¿Quién el de pesar el acierto de sus resoluciones?197 |
This apparent contradiction between governmental responsibility and governmental supremacy carries over into Jovellanos' concept of the role of the people and leads Sánchez Agesta to write that
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Jovellanos, como otros muchos hombres del siglo, ama al pueblo un poco teatral y racionalmente, por principios más que por sentimientos; y entre esos principios no figura además entregar el gobierno a ese pueblo cuya ignorancia es el supuesto mismo de la «ilustración» como movimiento politico y cultural. |
| (Pens. pol., 210) | ||
Some of the texts which I have already cited disprove the assertion that Jovellanos' sentiments were not involved in his sympathy for the people198, but the remainder of Sánchez Agesta's comment is valid. Jovellanos' proposals for agricultural and industrial reform, designed to benefit the lower classes, must be carried out by an enlightened minority. In the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central, he expresses confidence in «the public» and its natural love and respect for justice, though on the same page he proceeds to speak of «the people» in less flattering terms:
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El pueblo, si tal nombre se quiere dar a la gran masa de gente ignorante y bozal, que nunca juzga por su propia razón, sino por sugestión ajena, jamás profesa amor a su gobierno, nunca le hace justicia, y siempre halla culpas o faltas en los que le componen! Pero estos juicios no nacen de malignidad suya; le vienen siempre de la ajena. |
| (1: 569a) | ||
Jovellanos' diaries show his uneasiness about the disorderly nature of the popular uprisings of 1808 (O 4: 153a, 158a), and his plans for constitutional reform certainly do not include surrender to what he calls «la manía democrática» (O 4: 477b; 2: 377).
Though Jovellanos and many of his contemporaries abhor democracy as a corruption of republicanism (e. g., Burke, 185-186), they do not necessarily condemn republicanism itself. Jovellanos connects «el espíritu republicano» with liberty (O 2: 21a) and in a famous letter to Cabarrús contemplates a republican government for Spain. He declares that the nation recognizes Ferdinand as its king;
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pero si la fuerza le detiene, o si la priva de su príncipe, ¿no sabrá buscar otro que la gobierne? Y cuando tema que la ambición o la flaqueza de un rey la exponga a males tamaños como los que ahora sufre, ¿no sabrá vivir sin rey y gobernarse por sí misma?199 |
Jovellanos, so interested in British constitutional history, must have compared the situation of Great Britain in 1688 with that of a Spain abandoned by her princes and surrendered by them to a foreign power; and this analogy may suggest to him the idea of a nation's choosing its king, only a step removed from the abolition of monarchy. For all his denunciation of «la manía democrática» Jovellanos considers the republican government of the United States a model of desirable political organization; and although the letter to Cabarrús does not advocate what Jovellanos would mean by democracy -social leveling and mob rule- it implies that the nation, including the people, has the right to guide its own destinies without the benefit of a divinely-appointed monarch.
When Jovellanos assumes, writing to Cabarrús, that the nation as a whole possesses an authority higher than that of the king, he indirectly addresses himself to the question of sovereignty. In spite of his letter, in 1809 he still proclaims that sovereignty is indivisible and must in a monarchic state belong entirely to the king and not to the nation. Even should the king be incapacitated he remains sovereign, though in such a case the laws or the will of the nation («la ley, o la voluntad nacional dirigida por ella») may designate those who shall exercise the power of sovereignty (MJC, Appendix XII, 1: 597b). The distinction between sovereign rights and the exercise of sovereign power is designed to explain the highly anomalous position of the Junta Central, which was acting in the name of a king who by what we can only call a polite fiction was considered incapacitated against his will. The Junta's authority to do this is to be understood as deriving from «the will of the nation guided by law», that is, from the uprisings of 1808, for which Jovellanos and others sought justification in medieval law, particularly the Partidas. Jovellanos does not at this point admit directly that the nation is itself sovereign, and among the more revolutionary of his contemporaries he passed for an enemy of the doctrine of national sovereignty200.
This doctrine had been proclaimed in Article III of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and was later incorporated in the Spanish Constitution of 1812; in keeping with it the Cortes of Cádiz declared on 24 September 1810, after the dissolution of the junta Central, that sovereignty resided in them as the representatives of the nation (Camacho, 174, 178-179). Jovellanos was dead by 1812, but in December 1810 he was already writing to Lord Holland that the principle of national sovereignty destroys the Spanish constitution. Though accepted by political theorists, whom he generally distrusts, it is neither known nor understood by the people (O 4: 473a).
In a long note to Appendix XII of the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central (O 1: 619-621) Jovellanos tries to reconcile the two apparently irreconcilable doctrines of national sovereignty and regal sovereignty. He blames the disputes about sovereignty on the lack of a clear definition. If the term means «aquel poder absoluto, independiente y supremo» which by nature resides in every society, then the nation is sovereign; but since sovereignty properly implies a reciprocal relation of authority and submission, a nation cannot correctly be called its own sovereign, especially if it has transferred its power to one or more individuals who receive it by inheritance or other means independent of the popular will. This is so even if the nation reserves the legislative power to itself, for sovereignty is an attribute of the executive power. In this sensate kings of Spain have always been sovereign; and since sovereignty is indivisible, the nation cannot be sovereign. As Camacho explains (178-179), Jovellanos equates sovereignty with executive power while to the Cortes it means legislative power.
Up to this point Jovellanos opposes the ideas of the more liberal Spanish patriots, but in the remainder of his note he attempts a compromise which in effect almost coincides with their position. He declares that
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no se puede concebir una asociación de hombres que al constituirse en sociedad abdique para siempre tan preciosa porción del poder supremo como la que pertenece a la autoridad gubernativa, para depositarla en una o en pocas personas tan absolutamente, que no modifique esta autoridad, prescribiendo ciertos límites y señalando determinadas condiciones para su ejercicio. |
Here Jovellanos is in accord with Paine, whose Rights of Man seeks to demolish the alleged rights of hereditary rulers. For Paine, «sovereignty... appertains to the nation only, and not to any individual» (1: 83). Similarly Locke, one of those theorists who according to Jovellanos «no han hecho más que delirar en política», distinguishes government, which exists for the good of the governed, from property, which exists for the good of the possessor; and from this distinction he concludes that political power cannot be inherited like private property (TG, 228).
In conclusion, Jovellanos proposes the term «supremacía nacional». He claims that the declaration of the Cortes does not contradict the sovereignty of the king if sovereignty and supremacy are understood as separate concepts. This distinction had already been condemned as erroneous by Hobbes (Leviathan, xxix), but it is clearly made again by Locke. The chief executive, according to Locke, may be called «Supream» when he is not only the «Supream Executor of the Law» but also, as in England, a legislator. The people, however, hold ultimate power; even the legislature «being only a Fiduciary Power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the People a Supream Power to remove or alter the Legislative, when they find the Legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them». Under such circumstances the people may remove those who endanger their self-preservation, «for which they entered into Society» (TG, 384-387).
Jovellanos similarly comes to assert the nation's right to change its government. He explains that a constitution, explicit or implicit, gives rights and duties to governors and governed alike. Rulers that uphold their part of the compact must be obeyed; but the nation has the right to contain its government within the established limits,
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y por consecuencia, para obligarle a ellos si de hecho los quebrantare; y si tal fuere su obstinación, que se propasare a sostener esta infracción con la fuerza, la nación tendrá también el derecho de resistirla con la fuerza, y en el último caso, de romper por su parte la carta de un pacto ya abiertamente quebrantado por la de su contratante, recobrando así sus primitivos derechos. |
This natural right, the only political power not derived from any social compact or constitution, is part of the supreme power of society (MJC 1: 620b).
Since Jovellanos thinks of «national supremacy» as becoming operative only in exceptional cases, he can assert that the monarch is sovereign while at the same time justifying the formation of the juntas; he can defend the people's right to insurrection under abnormal circumstances and still support in more tranquil times the full authority of the king. His theories are continually modified to fit changing circumstances. In 1781 he speaks of the «sacrílego furor» which deprived Charles I of England of his life and crown (O 1: 256b). Writing to Jardine thirteen years later with the French Terror fresh in his mind, Jovellanos still condemns «el espíritu de rebelión» and prefers evolutionary change (O 2: 366-367), as does Godwin, who is in part the subject of their correspondence. Godwin does not deny that revolution may be justified but deems it generally impractical except in cases of «the most imminent necessity» (1793 ed., IV: i, ii). In this he is more moderate than Jardine, who seems to have sympathized strongly with revolutionary France. Again in 1802 Jovellanos calls for reforms within the established order and condemns any revolution against legitimate authority, regardless of its motives (TTP 1: 255b). In the face of the French invasion, however, and while denying the existence of a «derecho ordinario de insurrección», he declares that any people suddenly attacked from abroad and abandoned by its rulers has «un derecho extraordinario y legítimo de insurrección» (MJC 1: 584b), and that this right is grounded both in natural law and the Partidas (MJC 1: 509b-510a). Jovellanos thus tries to establish the legitimacy of the power which the Junta Central derived from provincial juntas created by the people «en abierta insurrección».
For Villota this acceptance of a right to insurrection is Thomism and demolishes «todas las suposiciones de pretendidas influencias en lo político de las doctrinas de Locke [y] de Rousseau» (68-69); but Locke, who justifies rebellion under various circumstances, does so specifically when the «legislative» is unlawfully altered, when the people are delivered «into the subjection of a Foreign Power», or «when he who has the Supream Executive Power, neglects and abandons that charge» (TG, 427-429). Locke's contemporaries applied his arguments to the alleged abdication of James II and the Revolution of 1688; and they are the same arguments that Jovellanos applies to Spain in 1808, when two Bourbons were abandoning their charge and delivering the people «into the subjection» of Bonaparte. Hutcheson also defends violent alteration of the constitution and the order of succession as defense against tyrants (2: 270-271, 302-303); and more recent justification for an insurrectionary change of government was available in Burke's defense of the Revolution of 1688 and the contrast he draws between it and the revolution in France. Finally, Jovellanos had followed developments in North America and might well recall the assertion of our Declaration of Independence that whenever any form of government contravenes the ends for which it was instituted
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it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. |
In short, Jovellanos' arguments may have Thomist sources as well; but his interest in British constitutional theory and the analogy of 1688 offer a more likely explanation of his justification of insurrection. Both in it and in his discussion of «national supremacy» Jovellanos stands close to the same Locke whose political theories he elsewhere scorns.
The ideal government which Jovellanos envisages in his last years is modeled on the British constitution as described by Locke and Montesquieu. The latter saw in Great Britain the separation of powers which he considered essential to monarchy:
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Les anciens, qui ne conoissoient pas la distribution des trois pouvoirs dans le gouvernement d'un seul, ne pouvoient se faire une idée juste de la monarchie. |
| (XI: ix) | ||
This feature was sanctioned by Article XVI of the Declaration of the Rights of Man:
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Toute société dans laquelle la garantie des droits n'est pas assurée ni la séparation des pouvoirs déterminée n'a point de constitution. |
In Spain, Cabarrús had demanded of Godoy the total separation of they judicial from the executive branch (Cartas, 21-23).
Jovellanos also considers the separation of powers an important and valuable constitutional arrangement, unfortunately not known to the ancients. Nor was it, in his opinion, perfected in the medieval constitution of Spain, which allowed the king to control both the judiciary and the Cortes. The complete independence of these branches would, however, be ruinous, since each could then abuse its position. Their powers must be limited by
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una balanza que mantenga entre ellos el equilibrio. Este equilibrio debe consistir en que gobierne siempre la Ley, nunca, el Hombre, en cuanto sea posible. |
| (O 5: 414b-415b) | ||
The separation which Jovellanos envisages does not appear to be tripartite. In particular,
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el derecho de interpretar las leyes está reservado a la autoridad que puede hacerlas... además de ser reprobado, es muy peligroso dejar las leyes expuestas a la arbitrariedad de la interpretación. Y si esto es cierto con respecto a las leyes positivas, ¿qué sería de las leyes políticas y constitucionales, si quedasen abiertas a las sutilezas y cavilaciones de los jurisconsultos? |
| (MJC 1: 512a) | ||
Judicial and legislative powers are thus combined, but for Jovellanos the legislative power traditionally belongs to the king in consultation with the Cortes201. Montesquieu (VI: v-vi), and with him Adam Smith (681), had insisted that the judiciary must be separated from the executive in order to prevent despotism; but Jovellanos' pattern rather recalls Locke's legislative, executive, and federative branches, the first two, being preferably separate, the last two generally united (TG, II: xii). This arrangement is accepted by Hutcheson (2: 234 ff) and by Paine, who considers, the courts a part of the administrative process (Rights of man 2: 39).
Jovellanos thinks of the executive as the power concerned with the day-to-day governing of the country, «y aun por esto tengo yo para mí que su más propia denominación sería la de poder gobernativo» (MJC 1: 620a). It must be «unified, active, vigorous, and secret», and is therefore best exercised by one man, in spite of the dangers inherent in monarchy (MJC 1: 585). Though not ruling out republicanism, Jovellanos generally agrees with Montesquieu that the most suitable constitution for a large nation is a monarchic one.
The separation of powers, Jovellanos believes, will produce a disadvantageous rivalry between the executive and legislative branches unless balance is achieved by the division of the legislature into two chambers one to propose, the other to «review» the laws. The reviewing chamber, composed of those who have the greatest stake in society, can then check conflicting tendencies toward democracy and despotism; not siding with either party, it will work only for the common good and ensure that laws, not men, shall rule, «en la cual está cifrada la suma de la perfección social». This, balance is unknown in most European countries, as it was to the ancients; and «los políticos modernos (cuya propensión democrática ha causado tantos males en nuestra edad)» reject it; yet it is
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el más precioso descubrimiento debido al estudio y meditación de la historia antigua y moderna de las sociedades. El cual, además de apoyarse en razones de la más alta filosofía, está canonizado con el ejemplo de los dos grandes pueblos de Europa y América en que se ha dividido la ilustre nación inglesa. A esta balanza debe el primero su prodigioso engrandecimiento, la conservación de su libertad y la inmutabilidad de su constitución; a ella debe el segundo el vigor con que camina con pasos de gigante al mismo engrandecimiento y a los mismos bienes, y ella asegurará a uno y otro la conservación y el aumento de estas ventajas, si el furor democrático, destruyendo este equilibrio y garantía de sus constituciones, no se las arrebata. |
No government can be stable without this balance; and since the system can be adapted to the Spanish constitution without destroying its essence, its establishment should be one of the first objects of constitutional reform202.
Jovellanos' knowledge of this system must derive in part from Montesquieu, who explains the moderating function of the House of Lords and the tripartite legislative machinery which reserves to the crown the right to convoke parliament and to veto bills (XI: vi). The same features, furthermore, are stressed by the Duke of Almodóvar, whose adaptation of the abbé Raynal's Histoire philosophique et politique Jovellanos had censored203. These readings have been supplemented with information on the American constitution and with the counsel of Lord Holland and his secretary John Allen. In advocating the adaptation of this system to the Spanish constitution, Jovellanos departs from the legal tradition of his country, according to which full legislative authority rested with the king, not the Cortes, though the latter could petition and were consulted by the crown (Martínez Marina, 39-49). Furthermore, though the three estates were represented in the medieval Cortes, they did not form separate chambers of that body204. When Jovellanos insists that separate representation of the privileged orders is essential to a monarchic constitution he realizes that he is proposing something new; but since the Cortes to be convoked are to be the first national parliament, as distinguished from the ancient Cortes of the various Spanish kingdoms, he declares that old systems of representation are inapplicable205.
Jovellanos' justification of bicameralism takes different forms. On the one hand, he sees the balancing function of the upper house as a necessary interposition between crown and people, and the separate seating of the privileged orders as an arrangement without which
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la constitución podría ir declinando insensiblemente hacia la democracia; cosa que no sólo todo buen español, sino todo hombre de bien, debe mirar con horror en una nación grande, rica y [sic] industriosa... |
| (MJC 1: 596b) | ||
This anti-democratic character of bicameralism was one reason why more revolutionary spirits such as Paine opposed it206. Jovellanos, however, tries to adapt their own arguments to its defense: If the nobles and prelates were seated with the commons their prestige would guarantee their election to the single chamber and allow them to dominate it by their rank and numbers; to limit their eligibility would, however, be an unjust abrogation of their rights (MJC 1: 602b). Why not establish three chambers, then, corresponding to the three estates? Jovellanos rejects this solution as wasteful and in addition makes a new appeal to the principle of balance, now within the upper house: since peers and prelates have different interests, they will balance each other if they sit together; and thus they will keep each other from oppressing the people (ibid.). The Cortes must then be bicameral, following the British and American pattern.
The lower house should be freely elected by all citizens not legally incapacitated. Any elector should be eligible to serve in it, though originally Jovellanos wished to require of members «ciertas calidades de propiedad, estado y doctrina, en que se pudiese apoyar mejor la confianza nacional» (MJC 1: 551a). The upper house is to be composed of the upper ranks of the nobility (presumably the grandees) and of the clergy (the prelates). This chamber will ensure not only double but also careful and wise deliberation, because «es cierto que en la conservación del bien común de la sociedad, aquellos tienen mayor interés que más poseen y más arriesgan». It will also serve as a balance between king and people. When onerous privileges have been abolished, leaving only those necessary for the maintenance of distinctions of rank, the people will benefit from the existence of the upper classes, to which they themselves may rise by merit and which, their rights of representation guaranteed, will be an independent check on the power of the crown207. Legislative authority, unlike sovereignty, is divisible; its component functions of «la iniciativa, la resolución y la sanción» will be vested in the lower house, the upper house, and the crown, respectively, though the latter two should also be allowed to propose legislation (MJC 1: 555a, 621b-622a).
In defense of these suggestions Jovellanos appeals to foreign examples:
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Y cuando no se admirase el saludable freno que la Cámara de los Pares pone en Inglaterra así al rey como a los comunes, ¿por qué no se admira en la democracia federal de América el que opone el Senado a los excesos del Congreso [sic], sujetando las nuevas leyes a una segunda deliberación? |
| (ltr., 1811, O 2: 377b) | ||
It is therefore inaccurate to say, as does Yaben (Juicio crítico, 258-259), that Jovellanos, in opposition to those who wish to introduce British institutions and the principle of national sovereignty, seeks only to reestablish the ancient Spanish constitution. Jovellanos denies that he wants a new constitution; but the modifications of the old that he proposes are drawn from the British example; and he also comes to admit something very close to national sovereignty, though calling it «supremacy». It is Jovellanos who looks to British and American models; it is the liberals who wish to go beyond these models, which they consider too reactionary. This sentiment is not confined to Spaniards; Godwin objects to the power of the American presidency, and Paine declares the constitution of the United States «a copy, though not quite so base as the original, of the form of the British government».208 Jovellanos favors change; but the changes he favors place him between the democrats and the intransigent adherents of the Old Régime.
Jovellanos' ideas triumphed in the final decree of the Junta Central (29 January 1810). Aided by the advice of Allen (O 4: 439b, 450a, 464), he was the chief author of this document, which convoked a bicameral Cortes of prelates, grandees, and commons, and granted the veto to the projected regency. Like the American Congress, however, the Cortes were to have the right to override the veto by a two-thirds vote of each chamber (MJC, App. XVIII, 1: 605b). Jovellanos, who believed that the British constitution showed the usefulness of the crown's absolute veto, did not wish to grant more than a limited veto to an interim government (MJC 1: 555a). When the Cortes had gathered, however, they reconstituted themselves into a single chamber, proclaimed national sovereignty, and abolished the veto, much to the disgust of Jovellanos, now living in retirement. To the end of his life, which was fast approaching, Jovellanos lamented these developments and called for acceptance of his original proposals (O 2: 375b; 4: 471, 473).
Thus we see that throughout the constitutional crisis of the War of Independence, and in the major work that grew out of that crisis, the Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central, British influences on Jovellanos' thought are particularly evident, though some of them, like the exhortations and advice of Holland and Allen about Cortes and a free press, cannot be fully documented209. Years earlier, Jovellanos had preached the need for gradual progress to Jardine; in response to what seems to have been his radical friend's advocacy of Godwin's «system», he asks:
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¿Parécele a usted que sería poca dicha nuestra pasar al estado de Inglaterra, conocer la representación, la libertad política y civil, y supuesta la división de la propiedad, una legislación más protectora de ella? Cierto que sería grande, por más que estando en ella tuviésemos derecho de aspirar, no al sistema de Godwin, sino por ejemplo a una constitución cual la que juró Luis XVI en 1791. |
| (O 2: 367a) | ||
Now, in his final years, he draws up his program of political reform, asking that old laws and old methods be adapted to the new situation in which Spain finds herself, but insisting that the constitution must be reformed, not abolished, since the king has not violated it (MJC 1: 548b; cf. ibid., 621b).
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Mi deseo era preparar por medio de nuestro plan, una Constitución modelada por la inglesa, y mejorada en cuanto se pudiese; y a esto se dirigía la forma que ideábamos para la organización de la asamblea. |
| (O 4: 473b) | ||
To criticism of such proposals Jovellanos replies:
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Alguno, oyéndome discurrir sobre estos principios, me reconvino: «¿Con que usted quiere hacernos ingleses? -Si usted, le respondí, conoce bien la constitución de Inglaterra; si ha leído lo que de ella han escrito Montesquieu, De-Lolme y Blackstone; si sabe que el sabio republicano Adams dice de ella que es en la teórica la más estupenda fábrica de la humana invención, así por el establecimiento de su balanza como por los medios de evitar su alteración... [sic] y que ni la invención de las lenguas ni el arte de navegación y la construcción de naves hacen más honor al entendimiento humano; si ha observado los grandes bienes que este ilustre y poderoso pueblo debe a su constitución, y si ha penetrado las grandes analogías que hay entre ella y la antigua constitución española, y en fin, si usted reflexiona que no sólo puede conformarse con ella, sino que cualquiera imperfección parcial que se advierta en la constitución inglesa, y cualquiera repugnancia que tenga con la nuestra, se pueden evitar en una buena reforma constitucional, ciertamente que la reconvención de usted será tan poco digna de su boca como de mi oído» |
Such sentiments and beliefs contributed to Jovellanos' political isolation, for the ideals to which he adhered were shared neither by devotees of the Old Régime who like Floridablanca «oían con sobresalto el nombre de cortes» (O 1: 541a) nor by the democrats who came to power in 1810.
| (MJC 1: 573b) | ||
English letters and English institutions made their mark on all of eighteenth-century Europe. The names of Bacon, Locke, and Newton gave prestige to English thought; Pope, Dryden, Milton, and Young were widely read and translated; Addison and Richardson were admired; and even the much-maligned Shakespeare began to make his influence felt on the Continent. England became for many the home of political liberty and religious toleration. Such leading spirits of the Enlightenment as Voltaire and Montesquieu, Diderot and Condillac, owed much to contacts with the ways and thought of their island neighbors. Although the century was to reach a spectacular climax in the French Revolution, «England more than any other country be came the fount of new social ideals and new social conditions; it was from England that the new ideas spread from one country to another» (Heckscher, 1: 468-469). In Spain the best representative of this trend was Jovellanos.
Increasingly rejecting the Spanish mercantilists who preceded him, Jovellanos believed that the main purpose of economic policy is to promote the welfare of the individual by increasing his consumption of goods and that this purpose is best served by restricting governmental activity and protecting private interest and private property. Self-interest, he thought, will by and large prove the best instrument for the achievement of private and public prosperity, but it is subject to moral imperatives which it is the state's duty to carry out. The state may also regulate private property, though both these instances of governmental interference can be justified only when they are under taken to guarantee the full operation of property rights and self-interest, not to destroy them. Wealth is goods and is obtained primarily from agriculture but also from manufacturing and trade. It is the product of labor; its increase, as well as the enlightened working of self-interest, depends on education.
These theories led Jovellanos to advocate an agrarian reform to broaden the distribution of land and free its exploitation. He wished to stimulate manufactures by expanding their markets and to favor them in some cases with protective tariffs, though not with a system of prohibitions. He envisaged breaking the power of the guilds, though subjecting labor to the supervision of the state. He called for free internal commerce and a foreign trade limited only by some degree of protectionism. He favored progressive taxation, though in practice advocating extension of the most regressive taxes.
It is not difficult to find contradictions between Jovellanos' theory and the practices he suggests, or among different parts of his theory; and considering that his economic writings span more than twenty years of his life and deal with a number of separate concrete problems, this is hardly surprising. What is remarkable is not the contradictions but the growing adherence to the principles of economic liberalism. Jovellanos was evidently at a considerable remove from mercantilism, and Jesús Prados Arrarte's study has made it clear that he was no physiocrat. Prados and others disagree about his exact place in the spectrum ranging from mercantilism through postmercantilism to classical liberalism210; but we have seen that in his concept of wealth, his theory of self-interest, his idea of the function of government, and his understanding of value and price Jovellanos stood on the whole close to the Wealth of Nations. Ever conscious of the need to adapt reform to circumstances, he both deviated from the strict application of its teachings and sur passed it in envisaging an ideal, though perhaps unattainable, society; but his views approached Adam Smith's more closely than they did those of any other writer.
Some of Jovellanos' Spanish contemporaries also accepted more or less liberal views, but only Campomanes ranged so widely in his economic discussion. While the two Asturians coincided in many practical proposals, however, they differed radically in theory. Campomanes, in spite of his lip-service to liberty, sought economic development in the service of the state and under the minute control of the state, while Jovellanos, in spite of his occasional willingness to interfere with private activity, aimed consistently for the welfare of the individual. Some of his proposals deviated from liberal ideals, but they were made for specific instances and with a view to implementation under existing political conditions. The liberalism of Jovellanos was a practical liberalism.
Prior to 1784 Jovellanos' chief sources of economic thought were Campomanes, Cantillon, and Condillac; but it was in the ten years after this date that Jovellanos produced most of his main economic works. In them, though the reliance on practical measures derived from Campomanes is still noticeable, the influence of Adam Smith becomes dominant and the much lesser influence of Ferguson and Hutcheson also appears. Before completion of the Informe de ley agraria Jovellanos already knew the work of Godwin, and during the next several years the reading of English radical re formers was reflected in diaries and correspondence. These private writings show that Jovellanos' dedication to economic liberalism was greater than his official reports indicate and was growing rather than decreasing. His English sources, and especially Adam Smith, played an important role in this development.
Jovellanos explained his epistemology only in connection with his educational writings. In doing so, he stressed observation, analysis, and reasoning, basing on them his hopes for an improved education and, through education, for better men and a better world. Jovellanos blamed scholasticism for retarding knowledge. Science for him began with Bacon, and the sciences of the mind were reborn with the «sublime metaphysics of Locke». Locke's influence on Jovellanos' educational writings is visible in many instances, but it was not as great and consistent as has sometimes been assumed; it was considerably modified by the epistemology of Condillac, whom Jovellanos followed in several respects. As he drew closer to Condillac, his ethics also came to lay more stress on sentiment and intuitive knowledge at the expense of reason. Together Locke and Condillac provided the basis for Jovellanos' writings on the theory of knowledge. One can find coincidences with other authors as well, but these two are the masters he himself acknowledged and whom he followed.
Jovellanos' political theories, elaborated at different times and under different circumstances, are not free from vacillation, vagueness, and contradictions. They owe these features to their pragmatism; they were developed only with a view to practice and historical fact, in keeping with Jovellanos' belief that politics has no fixed principles and that political institutions are the results of historical processes.
In his concepts of the origin and nature of society Jovellanos adhered closely to Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, which he read three times-a tribute he paid to no other modern author but Smith. Like Ferguson, he rejected the notion of a social compact, fundamental to the politics of Locke and, later, of Rousseau. Like Ferguson, he considered society and government the natural and only possible state of man, outside of which he has never existed and within which he is held by ties of interest and even stronger ties of benevolence. Only within this state does man have rights; natural rights, neither prior nor superior to society, are conceivable only in the context of society. The reconciliation of benevolence and self interest was for Jovellanos the task of education, which was to improve the moral as well as the intellectual faculties of the citizens. Social and political institutions, he believed, must be explained in terms of their historical origin and their functions in the body politic; hence his desire for reform growing out of a revitalized tradition. This desire allied him to the British political heritage and separated him from the radicalism of the French Revolution, which in its effort to make a clean sweep of the past demolished even the calendar.
His essentially organic concept of society is reflected in Jovellanos' view of the role of the nobility; it also led him to stress custom and tradition as the bases of a constitution, For Jovellanos a constitution was institutionalized tradition, not a new edifice to be built from the ground up. His proposals for constitutional reform sought not to establish equality but to safeguard liberty, an ideal which, he believed, could best be preserved through a system of political balance. This system, which would give political form to the social function of each class, Jovellanos saw and admired in the Anglo-Saxon constitutions, whose principles he tried to adapt to the needs of Spain when he was a member of the Junta Central and its Comisión de Cortes. Though the Cortes of Cádiz rejected the essentials of his plans, their own achievement proved little less ephemeral.
Although Jovellanos did not esteem Locke's political theories as highly as he did An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he found them helpful in his efforts to justify the establishment of the Junta Central and to reconcile the authority of the crown with the newly proclaimed dogma of national sovereignty. Under circumstances resembling those of Great Britain in 1688 he used arguments previously employed by Locke. He elaborated a concept of national supremacy and advanced to a cautious defense of insurrection under special conditions. At the same time he fought for a constitutional reform which would prevent a repetition of 1808 and yet avoid 1793. He saw a solution in the principle of balance embodied in the British and American constitutions, and he argued that Spain should adopt the separation of powers and bicameral legislature which he credited with the political achievements of the Anglo-Saxon nations.
Locke, Smith, and Ferguson are Jovellanos' principal English sources. We have seen the degree to which they left their traces on his works, a degree hitherto undefined and, in the case of Ferguson, largely unsuspected. A round them cluster a host of minor figures -reformers, historians, travelers, poets, and novelists- who to a lesser extent contributed to Jovellanos' intellectual formation and development. His contact with these English writers began in Seville; by the mid or late 1780's he knew the three most significant authors; and in the last years of his life personal and political factors combined with repeated readings of his favorite works to strengthen his devotion to English thought and letters. It was in this period that Lord Holland held before Jovellanos the political and social ideals of the British Whigs; it was now that a patriotic and humane Spaniard, disgusted with the mockery that the French Revolution had made of the ideals of the Enlightenment, had to feel an increased though not unwavering solidarity with Spain's allies in her struggle for survival.
Jovellanos was too Spanish and too intelligent to fall victim to a foolish and superficial Anglomania; he was too much a cosmopolitan spirit and too omnivorous a reader to orient his thought exclusively toward England. He was not, on the whole, doctrinaire, but conformed admirably to Burke's «standard of a statesman»:
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A man full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. |
| (232-233) | ||
Jovellanos, as his consistencies and contradictions show, was both idealistic and practical. He sought a society composed of individuals intellectually and morally enlightened, free to engage in «the pursuit of happiness», the masters of the state and the objects of its solicitude, not its slaves. Such men should be free to take the place in society for which their virtues and talents fit them, free to control their individual and collective destinies within a society that, building on the old, moves toward a new and better world. These goals, dictated by the Reason and the Heart, were to be achieved by clear and free thought, by cultivation of the natural, intellectual, and moral sciences, by the release, in a word, of the moral, intellectual, economic, and political energies of the individual.
The present study has shown the important role played by Jovellanos' English sources in the formulation of his goals and in his choice of the means to attain them.
The bibliography on Jovellanos is enormous. The following list includes only those works cited in the present study or otherwise found useful in its preparation.
Adellac, Miguel. 1912. Jovellanos y la cuestión social de su tiempo. See Ateneo.
—— 1915. Estudio preliminar to Manuscritos inéditos de Jovellanos: plan de educación de la nobleza trabajado de orden del rey en 1798 [Jovellanos' authorship is doubtful]. Gijón.
Alcázar Molina, Cayetano. 1927. Los hombres del reinado de Carlos III: D. Pablo de Olavide (el colonizador de Sierra Morena). Madrid.
[Almodóvar Del Río, Pedro Jiménez de Góngora y Luján, Duque de, =] Eduardo Malo de Luque. 1784-1790. Historia política de los establecimientos ultramarinos de las naciones europeas. 5 v. Madrid.
A[lonso] Bonet, Joaquín. 1959. Proyección nacional de la villa de Jovellanos. Gijón.
Andrés Álvarez, Valentín. See Jovellanos 1955.
The annual register, or a view of the history, politics, and literature, for the year 1806. 1808. London.
Artíñano y de Galdácano, Gervasio de. 1913. Jovellanos y su España. Madrid.
Askwith, W. H. 1900. List of officers of the royal regiment of artillery from the year 1716 to the year 1899. 4th ed. London.
El Ateneo de Gijón en el primer centenario de Jovellanos: conferencias y lecturas, 1911. 1912. Gijón.
Ayala, Francisco. 1945. Jovellanos sociólogo. See Centro.
Azcárate, Gumersindo de. 1912. Jovellanos y su tiempo. See Ateneo.
Bonet. See A[lonso] Bonet.
Burke, Edmund. 1790. Reflections on the revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris. 4th ed. London.
Cabarrús, Francisco. 1787. Discurso sobre la libertad de comercio concedida por S. M. á la América meridional. Leydo en junta de 28 de Febrero de 1778. Memorias de la Sociedad Económica [Matritense] 3: 282-294.
——1808. Cartas sobre los obstaculos que la naturaleza, la opinion y las leyes oponen a la felicidad publica: escritas por el conde de Cabarrus al señor don Gaspar de Jovellanos, y precedidas de otra al Príncipe de la Paz. Vitoria.
—— 1808. Memoria al rey nuestro señor Carlos III, para la extincion de la deuda nacional y arreglo de contribuciones en 1783. Vitoria [published with Cartas but separately paginated].
Cadalso, José de. 1803. Suplemento al papel intitulado Los eruditos a la violeta in Obras 1. Madrid.
—— 1950. Cartas marruecas. Ed. Juan Tamayo y Rubio (Clásicos castellanos). Madrid.
Camacho y Perea, Ángel M.ª 1913. Estudio crítico de las doctrinas de Jovellanos en lo referente a las ciencias morales y políticas. Madrid.
Campomanes, Pedro Rodríguez. 1765. Tratado de la regalia de amortizacion, en el qual se demuestra por la série de las varias edades, desde el nacimiento de la iglesia en todos los siglos y países católicos, el uso constante de la autoridad civil, para impedir las ilimitadas enagenaciones de bienes raíces en iglesias, comunidades, y otras manos-muertas; con una noticia de las leyes fundamentales de la monarquia española sobre este punto, que empieza con los godos, y se continua en los varios estados sucesivos, con aplicacion á la exigencia actual del reyno despues de su reunion, y al beneficio comun de los vasallos. Madrid.
—— 1775. Discurso sobre la educacion popular de los artesanos, y su fomento. Madrid.
—— 1775-1777. Apéndice a la educacion popular. 4 v. Madrid.
—— 1795. Discurso sobre el fomento de la industria popular. Hamburg.
Cantillon, Richard. 1931. Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. Ed. Henry Higgs. London.
Carande. See Olavide.
Carrera Pujal, Jaime. 1943-1947. Historia de la economía española. 5 v. Barcelona.
Cartas político-económicas escritas por el conde de Campomanes, primero de este título, al conde de Lerena. 1878. Ed. Antonio Rodríguez Villa. Madrid.
Casariego, J[esús] E[varisto]. 1943. Jovellanos o el equilibrio (ideas, desventuras y virtudes del inmortal hidalgo de Gijón). Madrid.
Caso González, José. 1957. Jovellanos y la Inquisición (un intento inquisitorial de prohibir el «Informe sobre ley agraria» en 1797). Archivum 7: 231-259.
—— 1959. Rectificaciones y apostillas a mi artículo «Jovellanos y la Inquisición». Archivum 9: 91-94.
—— 1960. Notas críticas de bibliografía jovellanista (1950-1959). Boletín de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo 36: 179-213.
—— 1961. Poesías. See Jovellanos 1961.
Castro, Américo. 1956. Semblanzas y estudios españoles. Princeton [reprints an article from El Sol of Madrid of 21 July 1933].
Ceán Bermúdez, Juan Agustín. 1814 [1820]. Memorias para la vida del Excmo. Señor D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, y noticias analíticas de sus obras. Madrid.
[Centro Asturiano de Buenos Aires]. 1945. Jovellanos: su vida y su obra. Homenaje del Centro Asturiano de Buenos Aires en el bicentenario de su nacimiento, con la adhesión de los Centros Asturianos de La Habana y México. Buenos Aires.
Colmeiro, Manuel. 1880. Biblioteca de los economistas españoles de los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII. Madrid.
Condillac, [Étienne Bonnot de]. 1798. Le commerce et le gouvernement, considérés relativement l'un à l'autre. Œuvres 4. Paris.
—— 1798. Essai sur l'origine des conoissances humaines. Œuvres 1. Paris.
—— 1798. La logique, ou les premiers développemens de l'art de penser. Œuvres 22. Paris.
Condorcet, [Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat,] Marquis De. 1787. The life of M. Turgot, comptroller general of the finances of France, in the years 1774, 1775, and 1776. London [anonymous translation of Vie de M. Turgot 1786].
Corominas, Joan. 1954. Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana. 4 v. Madrid.
Costa, Joaquín. 1898. Colectivismo agrario en España. Partes I y II. Doctrinas y hechos. Madrid.
Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio. 1897. Iriarte y su época. Madrid.
Cueto, Leopoldo Augusto De, ed. 1869-1875. Poetas líricos del siglo XVIII. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 61, 63, 67. 3 v. Madrid.
D'Alembert, [Jean Le Rond]. 1948. Eloge de monsieur de Montesquieu & analyse de l'Esprit des loix. Buenos Aires [facsimile from De l'esprit des loix 1, Amsterdam and Leipsic, 1763-1764].
Desdevises Du Dézert, G. 1897-1904. L'Espagne de l'ancien régime. 3 v. Paris [revised version in Revue Hispanique 1925-1928].
Diderot, Denis. 1875. Don Pablo Olavidès: précis historique rédigé sur des mémoires fournis à M. Diderot par un espagnol (1782). Œuvres 6: 467-472, ed. J. Assézat. Paris.
Dowdle, Harold Lowe. 1954. The humanitarianism of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Unpublished dissertation, Stanford University.
[Eximeno y Pujades, Antonio]. 1789. Antonii Eximeni presbyteri valentini De studiis philosophicis et mathematicis instituendis ad virum clarissimum suique amicissimum Ioannem Andresium liber unus. Madrid.
Ferguson, Adam. 1767. An essay on the history of civil society. Edinburgh.
—— 1773. Institutes of moral philosophy. For the use of students in the College of Edinburgh. 2d ed. Edinburgh.
Galino Carrillo, María Ángeles. 1953. Tres hombres y un problema: Feijoo, Sarmiento y Jovellanos ante la educación moderna. Madrid.
Gandía, Enrique De. 1959. Las ideas políticas de Jovellanos. La nueva democracia 39 (3): 36-45.
García Rendueles. See Rendueles.
Geddes, Michael. 1702. Miscellaneous tracts. London.
Godwin, William. 1946. Enquiry concerning political justice and its influence on morals and happiness. 3 v., ed. F. E. L. Priestley. Toronto.
González, Julio V. 1945. Influencia de las ideas de Jovellanos en la gesta emancipadora argentina. See Centro.
González Blanco, Edmundo. 1911. Jovellanos: su vida y su obra. Madrid.
González Llana, José. 1928. El sistema social de don Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Revista general de legislación y jurisprudencia 77 (tomo 152): 540-550.
Hamilton, Earl J. 1932. Spanish mercantilism before 1700 in Facts and factors in economic history: articles by former students of Edwin Francis Gay, 214-239. Cambridge, Mass.
—— 1935. The mercantilism of Gerónimo de Uztáriz: a reexamination in Norman E. Himes, ed., Economics, sociology & the modern world: essays in honor of T. N. Carver, 111-129. Cambridge, Mass.
—— 1947. War and prices in Spain, 1651-1800. Cambridge, Mass.
Heckscher, Eli F. 1955. Mercantilism. 2 v., trans. Mendel Shapiro, ed. E. F. Söderlund. Revised [2d] ed. London.
Helman, Edith F. 1952. Some consequences of the publication of the Informe de ley agraria by Jovellanos in Estudios hispánicos: homenaje a Archer M. Huntington, 253-273. Wellesley, Mass.
—— 1961. El humanismo de Jovellanos. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 15: 519-528.
Herr, Richard. 1958. The eighteenth-century revolution in Spain. Princeton.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1960. Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civil. Ed. Michael Oakeshott. Oxford.
Holland, Henry Richard Lord. 1851. Foreign reminiscences. Ed. Henry Edward lord Holland. New York.
Huici Miranda. See Jovellanos 1931.
Hutcheson, Francis. 1775. A system of moral philosophy, in three books. 2 v. Glasgow.
Ilie, Paul. 1960-1961. Picturesque beauty in Spain and England: aesthetic rapports between Jovellanos and Gilpin. Jour. Aesthetics and Art Criticism 19: 167-174.
[Jardine, Alexander]. 1788. Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal, &c. by an English officer. 2 v. London.
Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor De. Manuscript collection in the public library of Gijón. Copies and autographs in four carpetas or folders.
—— 1858-1956. Obras publicadas e inéditas. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 46, 50, 85-87. 5 v., ed. Cándido Nocedal (1-2), Miguel Artola (3-5). Madrid.
—— 1911. Cartas de Jovellanos y lord Vassall Holland sobre la Guerra de la Independencia (1808-1811). 2 v., ed. Julio Somoza García-Sala. Madrid.
—— 1913. Jovellanos: manuscritos inéditos, raros, o dispersos. Ed. Julio Somoza García-Sala. Madrid.
—— 1915. Obras de Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos: diarios (memorias íntimas): 1790-1801. Madrid.
—— 1931. Miscelánea de trabajos inéditos, varios y dispersos de D. G. M. de Jovellanos. Ed. Vicente Huici Miranda. Barcelona.
—— 1935-1946. Obras escogidas. 3 v., ed. Ángel del Río (Clásicos castellanos). Madrid.
—— 1953-1955. Diarios. 3 v., ed. Julio Somoza, estudio preliminar de Ángel del Río, índices y nota liminar de José María Martínez Cachero. Oviedo.
—— 1955. Informe sobre la ley agraria. Ed. and prologue, Valentín Andrés Álvarez. Madrid.
—— 1961 [1962]. Poesías. Ed. José Caso González. Oviedo. Jovellanos en la Real Academia de la Historia: número extra ordinario del Boletín de esta corporación, conmemorativo del centenario de tan insigne académico. 1911. Madrid.
Jovellanos: su vida y su obra. See Centro.
Juderías, Julián. 1913. Don Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos su vida, su tiempo, sus obras, su influencia social. Madrid.
Juretschke, Hans. 1955. Los supuestos históricos e ideológicos de las Cortes de Cádiz. Nuestro tiempo 2 (18): 13-35.
Larkin, Paschal. 1930. Property in the eighteenth century with special reference to England and Locke. Cork.
Le Brun, Carlos. 1826. Retratos politicos de la revolución de España, ó de los principales personages que han jugado en ella, muchos de los quales están sacados en caricaturas por el ridiculo en que ellos mismos se habian puesto, quando el retratista los iba sacando; con unas observaciones politicas al fin sobre la misma; y la resolucion de la qüestion de porque se malogró esta, y no la de los Estados-Unidos. Philadelphia.
Leonhard, Rudolf. 1909. Agrarpolitik und Agrarreform in Spanien unter Carl III. Munich and Berlin.
Llabrés, Gabriel. 1891. Jovellanos en Mallorca (1801-1808). Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana 7 (tomo 4, nos. 136 and 137).
Lloréns, Vicente. 1961. Jovellanos y Blanco: en torno al Semanario patriótico de 1809. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 15: 262-278.
Locke, John. 1913. Some thoughts concerning education. Ed. R. H. Quick. Cambridge, England.
—— 1922. Of the conduct of the understanding in The educational writings of John Locke. Ed. John William Adamson. Cambridge, England.
—— 1959. An essay concerning human understanding. 2 v., ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser. New York.
—— 1960. Two treatises of government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge, England.
Maceira, A. G. 1892. Ideas filosóficas y políticas de Jovellanos. Revista contemporánea 17 (tomo 87): 386-395.
Malo De Luque, Eduardo. See Almodóvar.
Martínez, B[ernardo]. 1911-1912. Jovellanos. España y América 9 (vol. 31): 385-395, 9 (vol. 32): 25-34, 502-511, 10 (vol. 34): 414-422, 10 (vol. 35): 119-129, 301-313, 502 510, 10 (vol. 36): 312-319, 416-426.
Martínez Cachero, José María. See next item, and Jovellanos 1953-1955, Simón Díaz, and Suárez.
Martínez Cachero, José María, and Enrique Sánchez Reyes. 1956. Menéndez Pelayo y Asturias. Oviedo.
Martínez Marina, Francisco. 1808. Ensayo histórico-crítico sobre la antigua legislacion y principales cuerpos legales de los reynos de Leon y Castilla, especialmente sobre el código de D. Alonso el Sabio, conocido con el nombre de las Siete Partidas. Madrid.
Meléndez Valdés, Juan. See Cueto.
Memoria de las públicas demostraciones de júbilo en la promoción del Excelentísimo Señor D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, á la Embaxada de Rusia y Ministerio de Gracia y Justicia, por la Real Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del País de Asturias. 1798. Oviedo.
Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino. 1946-1948. Historia de los heterodoxos españoles. Obras completas 35-42. 8 v., ed. Enrique Sánchez Reyes. Santander.
Moldenhauer, Gerhard. 1929. Voltaire und die spanische Bühne im 18. Jahrhundert. Berliner Beiträge zur Romanischen Philologie 1: 115-131.
Montesquieu, [Charles de Secondat, Barón De]. 1922. De l'esprit des lois. 2 v. Paris.
Necker, [Jacques]. 1786. Sur la législation et le commerce des grains. Œuvres 4. Lausanne.
Noticia de los públicos regocijos con que la Real Universidad Literaria de Oviedo celebró la feliz elevación de su hijo el Exmo. Sr. Dn. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Caballero del Orden de Alcántara, del Supremo Consejo de Castilla, embaxador en la corte de Rusia: á la Secretaria de Estado y del Despacho Universal de Gracia y Justicia de España é Indias, dedicada al mismo excelentísimo señor. 1798. Oviedo.
Ogilvie, William. 1920. An essay on the right of property in land with respect to its foundation in the law of nature, its present establishment by the municipal laws of Europe and the regulations by which it might be rendered more beneficial to the lower ranks of mankind in M. Beer, ed., The pioneers of land reform: Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine. New York.
Olavide, Pablo De. 1956. Informe de Olavide sobre la ley agraria. Ed. with prolegomena by Ramón Carande. Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 139: 357-462.
Paine, Thomas. 1792. Rights of man: being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French Revolution. Part I. London.
—— 1792. Rights of man: Part the second. Combining principle and practice. 6th ed. London.
—— 1792. Letter addressed to the addressers, on the late proclamation. London.
—— 1797. A letter to George Washington, on the subject of the late treaty concluded between Great-Britain and the United States of America, including other matters. London.
Palacio Atard, Vicente. 1952. Fin de la sociedad española del antiguo régimen. Madrid.
Patac, Ignacio. 1944. Jovellanosy la minería . Sí (Madrid, supplement to Arriba) 3 (105, 9 January 1944): 10.
Peñalver Simó, Patricio. 1953. Modernidad tradicional en el pensamiento de Jovellanos. Seville.
Planas Koechert, Rolf-Erich. 1940. Gerónimo de Uztáriz und Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos: ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte der spanischen Sozialökonomie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Diss. Zurich). Zurich.
Polt, John H. R. 1959. Jovellanos' El delincuente honrado. The Romanic Review 50: 170-190.
Prados Arrarte, Jesús. 1945. Jovellanos economista. See Centro.
Rendueles, Enrique G[arcía]. 1913. Jovellanos y las ciencias morales y políticas: estudio crítico. Madrid.
Ricard, Robert. 1957. De Campomanes à Jovellanos: les courants d'idées dans l'Espagne du XVIIIe siècle d'après un ouvrage recent [review of Sánchez Agesta, Pens. pol.]. Les lettres romanes 11: 31-52.
Río, Ángel Del. See Jovellanos 1935-1946, Jovellanos 1953-1955.
Robert, Louis. 1869. Les theories logiques de Condillac (Diss. Paris). Paris.
Rodríguez Campomanes, Pedro. See Campomanes.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1824. Émile. œuvres complètes 3-5. 3 v., ed. P. R. Auguis. Paris.
Saltykow, Wera. 1901. Die Philosophie Condillacs. Berner Studien zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte 27. Berne.
Sánchez, Miguel. 1881. Examen teológico-crítico de la obra del Excmo. Señor D. Cándido Nocedal titulada Vida de Jovellanos. Madrid.
Sánchez Agesta, Luis. 1953. El pensamiento político del despotismo ilustrado. Madrid.
—— 1955. España y Europa en el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII. Cuadernos de la Cátedra Feijoo instituída por el Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Oviedo en la Universidad 2. Oviedo.
Sánchez Albornoz, Claudio. 1945. Jovellanos y la historia. See Centro, and his Españoles ante la historia, Buenos Aires, 1958.
Santullano, Luis [Álvarez de]. n. d. [1936]. Jovellanos: siglo XVIII. Madrid.
Sarrailh, Jean. 1954. L'Espagne éclairée de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle. Paris.
Sempere y Guarinos, Juan. 1785-1789. Ensayo de una biblioteca española de los mejores escritores del reynado de Carlos III. 6 v. Madrid.
Serra Moret, Manuel. 1945. Jovellanos y la reforma agraria. See Centro.
Shaftesbury, Anthony Earl of. 1900. Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times, etc. 2 v., ed. John M. Robertson. London.
Simón Díaz, José, and José María Martínez Cachero. 1951. Bibliografía de Jovellanos (1902-1950). Boletín del Instituto de Estudios Asturianos 5 (13): 131-152.
Smith, Adam. 1937. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Ed. Edwin Carman. New York.
Smith, Robert Sidney. 1957. The Wealth of Nations in Spain and Hispanic America, 1780-1830. Jour. Political Economy 65: 104-125.
Somoza y García Sala [also Somoza, Somoza García-Sala, Somoza de Montsoriú], Julio. 1884. Cosiquines de la mió quintana. Oviedo.
—— 1885. Jovellanos: nuevos datos para su biografía. Havana and Madrid.
—— 1889. Las amarguras de Jovellanos: bosquejo biográfico (con notas y setenta y dos documentos inéditos). Gijón.
—— 1901. Inventario de un jovellanista con variada y copiosa noticia de impresos y manuscritos, publicaciones periódicas, traducciones, dedicatorias, epigrafía, grabado, escultura, etc., etc. Madrid.
—— 1911. Documentos para escribir la biografía de Jovellanos. 2 v. Madrid.
—— See further Jovellanos 1911, Jovellanos 1913, Jovellanos 1953-1955.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sir Sidney Lee, eds. 1937-1938. The dictionary of national biography. London.
Suárez, Constantino. 1955. Escritores y artistas asturianos índice bio-bibliográfico 4: 532-616, ed. José María Martínez Cachero. Oviedo [best bibliography since Somoza's Inventario, and preferable to Simón Díaz].
Villar Grangel, Domingo. 1912. Jovellanos y la reforma agraria. Madrid.
Villota Elejalde, Juan Luis. 1958. Doctrinas filosófico jurídicas y morales de Jovellanos. Oviedo.
Viñaza, [Cipriano Muñoz y Manzano], Conde de la. 1893. Biblioteca histórica de la filología castellana. Madrid.
Ward, Bernardo. 1779. Proyecto economico, en que se proponen varias providencias, dirigidas á promover los intereses de España, con los medios y fondos necesarios para su plantificacion. 2d printing. Madrid.
—— 1779. Obra pía. Madrid [pub. with Proyecto economice and consecutively paginated].
Yaben Yaben, Hilario. 1913. Juicio crítico de las doctrinas de Jovellanos en lo referente a las ciencias morales y políticas. Madrid.
—— 1944. Algo más sobre Jovellanos. Ecclesia 4 (158): 703, 706.