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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
It is as the author of the Ensayo Sobre El Catolicismo, El Liberalismo Y El Socialismo that Juan Donoso Cortés, first Marquis of Valdegamas, is best known. Donoso's reputation as a spokesman of the forces of counter-revolution grew steadily after 1848, and by the time the Ensayo appeared in 1851 he had, so to speak, a readymade audience of both friendly and adverse critics scattered throughout the continent of Europe. But the dramatic clashes of opinion with which the work was received extended its fame beyond the expected limits. For in the Ensayo Donoso not only attacked liberalism and socialism, but, perhaps without meaning to do so, he also offered a challenge to an important segment of Catholic thought and opinion, namely the Catholic liberals. The result was that the conservative publicist who was accustomed to being attacked from the Liberal benches in parliament and by the liberal press in Spain now found his severest critics in a Catholic group which included Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans and whose spokesman was the Abbé Gaduel. Of them Donoso complained to Pius IX that they were “prelates who had turned themselves into journalists.”
1 Hereinafter referred to simply as the Ensayo. It appeared in Madrid in 1851, the same year that Donoso went to Paris as Ambassador. A French translation appeared in the same year at Paris; the work was published in Italian in 1852 at Fuligno, in German in 1854 at Tuebingen, and in English in 1862 at Philadelphia. The most recent commentary upon the Ensayo in English is by Mayer, J. P.: “Donoso Cortes' De Civitate Dei” in the Dublin Review no. 451 (First Quarter, 1951) p. 76et seq.Google Scholar
2 The prolongation of the controversy in the French press led Donoso to submit the Ensayo to the judgment of the Pope. His letter is reproduced in Obras Ccmpletas de Don Juan Donoso Cortés, Marqués de Valdegamas, ed. DrJuretschke, don Juan (Madrid, 1946), Vol. II, pp. 565–570.Google Scholar
3 See Mayer, , loc. cit., especially p. 88Google Scholar; also Veuillot, Louis's introduction to the French edition of the collected works of Donoso: Oeuvres de Donoso Cortes, Marquis de Valdegamas, 3rd. edition (Paris, 1876), Vol. I, especially pp. xliii–xlivGoogle Scholar. The Ensayo and the controversy around it are exhaustively treated in ProfessorSchramm, Edmund's Donoso Cortés: Leben Und Werk Eines Spanischen Antiliberalen (Hamburg, 1935)Google Scholar. The Spanish translation is entitled Donoso Cortés: Su Vida Y Su Pensamiento (Madrid, 1936)Google Scholar. Subsequent references to Schramm indicate the Spanish edition.
4 Donoso should have anticipated some of the hostility that was almost certain to spring from a part of French Catholicism. He had used traditional Catholic teachings, as he understood them, as the basis of his attack on liberalism and republicanism as these two political phenomena manifested themselves in the revolutions of 1848. But not all members of the hierarchy were prepared to agree that revolution was to be condemned or that it was to be condemned on the basis of doctrine. Cardinal de Bonald, Primate of France (and son of the conservative publicist to whom Donoso was intellectually in debted) instructed his clergy after the revolution in France in the following terms: “Give to the faithful the example of submission and obedience to the Republic. You have long cherished the hope of enjoying the liberty which makes our brethren of the United States so happy. That liberty you shall have.” Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907 ed., Vol. II, p. 648.Google Scholar
5 Mayer qualifies his conservatism with this comparison: “Donoso is a contemporary of Burckhardt, Kierkegaard and Tocqueville; he is not a ‘conservative’ thinker like de Maistre; he looks, like these great contemporaries of his, toward the future.” loc. cit., p. 84.Google Scholar
6 Schmitt, Carl characterizes Donoso as “a rigid philosophic exponent of the authoritarian principle of dictatorship.” Vital Realities (New York, 1932), p. 30.Google Scholar
7 In “Donoso Cortes—A Prophet of Our Times,” Dublin Review, no. 440 (Spring, 1947), p. 30.Google Scholar
8 “Mas sobre estos antecedentes es interesante notar que los dos mayores personalidades de estirpe ideólogica contrarrevolucionaria son dos tradicionalistas que no se afiliaron, sin embargo, a la organización política correspondiente: Balmes y Donoso.” Pérez, Juan Beneyto, Historia de Las Doctrinas Politicas (Madrid, 1948), p. 450.Google Scholar
9 See Schram, , op. cit., pp. 185–196.Google Scholar
10 Ibid, passim.
11 Embassy despatches of 1851 and 1852 in Obras Completas, vol. II, pp. 743–748.Google Scholar
12 Baton Meyendorff, Russian Ambassador at Berlin, sent a copy of Donoso's speech in parliament on January 30, 1950, to Nesselrode with a eulogistic comment. To Donoso, Meyendorff wrote that the speech had produced its major effect upon Metternich. Schramm, , op. cit., pp. 226–227Google Scholar. At Meyendorff's urging Donoso established his acquaintanceship with Metternich the following year at Brussels.
13 Certain students of Donoso's work may challenge this on the basis of the dogmatism that is present in the Ensayo as well as the dogmatism (of a very different sort) that is in his early writings as a liberal. On these occasions, however, Donoso had cast himself less in the role of public servant than of political theorist and philosopher.
14 “Yo no creo en el derecho divino de los reyes, pero creo que en la majestad suprema, considerada en abstracto, hay algo de divino, y creo que la persona que la ejerce, llámese rey, presidente, emperador o cónsul, es sagrada.” The speech dealt with the motion to declare the Queen's majority, even though she lacked eleven months of the constitutional age, Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 910.Google Scholar
15 For the effect of Donoso's speech see Schramm, , op. cit., p. 217Google Scholaret seq. The text of the speech is reproduced in Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 326–344.Google Scholar
16 The temptation to leave the public service must have from time to time attracted him. On September 29, 1851, he wrote Gabino Tejado that he was arranging to leave public office, but he never did. Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 581. On October 11 of the same year he wrote to his close firend Count Raczynski, Prussian Ambassador at Madrid, that he would have given up the Embassy at Paris, if it were not for the complicated state of negotiations with the United States and France over the island of Cuba, “pues me parece que soy el único llamado a terminarlas.” Ibid., 796.
17 Probably the most nearly complete anthology of Donoso's writings is the two volume Juretschke edition which has been quoted in this paper and of which most frequent use has been made. The first collection was edited by Donoso's intimate friend Gabino Tejado and was issued at Madrid in five volumes, 1854–56. The three volume collection was published at Paris, 1858–59, and contains a long introduction by Louis Veuillot, another intimate friend. The next edition in Spanish was edited by J. M. Ottí y Lara, three volumes, Madrid 1891–93. Tejado severely edited the private correspondence with the result that no succeeding edition has been able to present it in full.
18 This article is extracted from materials prepared in connection with a larger study of Donoso as a public servant, which includes treatment of the other three categories.
19 Memoria Sobre La Monarquía, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 65–75Google Scholar. Schramm, , op. cit., p. 61Google Scholar indicates that the memorial was published in the following month by order of the king.
20 El Proyecto de Ley fundamental, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 333–367.Google Scholar
21 Dictamen de la Comision Sobre La Reforma Constitutional, Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 2–22.Google Scholar
22 In later life, the Duke of Riansares.
23 See Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 673Google Scholar for a passage which might be interpreted as a most oblique acknowledgment of the marriage.
24 El Gobierno y la Conducta de la Reina Madre, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp 665–690.Google Scholar
25 “… es necesario que haya uno o muchos que, conservando el ejercicio de la facultad de obrar y pensar, y aunque yerren y pequen, deber ser considerados como si no estuvleran sujetos ni a pecado ni a error, como si fueran infalibles e impecables.” Ibid., p. 683.
26 Ibid., pp. 744–5.
27 Ibid., pp. 741–4. Schramm, , op. cit., pp. 123–4Google Scholar, credits Donoso with authorship of manifest, and speculates about why he was so passionately the partisan of the Regent: “Otra cuestión es si de aquí ha de inferirse que era ciego para los errores y los defectos de esta mujer. Para él, como monárquico sin reservas, se trataba ante todo de defender a la Reina Madre por todos los medios contra las usurpaciones de la revolutión en marcha.”
28 Reinados de Menor Edad, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 909–14.Google Scholar
29 Candidatura Trápani, Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 35–41.Google Scholar
30 Op. cit., p. 151.Google Scholar
31 Discurso sobre Los Regies Enlaces, Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 43–57.Google Scholar
32 Carta a Maria Cristina, Ibid., 595–601.
33 “De lo que hoy se trata sólo es distribuir convenientemente la riqueza, que está mal distribuída. Esta, señora, es la unica cuestión que hoy se agita en el mundo. Si los gobernadores de las naciones no la resuelven, el socialismo vendrá a resolver el problema, y le resolverá poniendo a saco a las naciones.” Ibid., 598.
34 See footnotes 20, 21.
35 See footnotes 47, 48, 51, 59, 67, 69.
36 “… la teoría de la división de los Poderes es una teoría absurda; y … esa teoria, convertida en hecho, es un hecho anti-social y monstruoso….” Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 338.Google Scholar
37 See footnotes 21, 49, 61, 63, 66.
38 “Gobernar, señores, es descubrir un simbolo al cual se reúnan todos los entendimiencos. Para descubrir este símbolo que merezca la acceptación general es necesario que contenga todas estas cosas: es necesario que contenga la religión, es necesario que contenga la democracia, es necesario que contenga la monarquía y la libertad.” Obras Complete, Vol. II, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar
39 “Creo que la auscencia de los ministros priva a esta entrevista de gran parte de su importancia; todos han hecho protestas de amistad, manifestando el deseo de allanar las difficultades; pero éstas seguirán así después como antes de tales pláticas.” Ibid., 787.
40 Las Proyectadas Mudanzas En El Ministerio, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 159–178.Google Scholar
41 A few years later Donoso was to decide once and for all that parliament could not be sovereign—see footnote 36—but in 1835 he had not reached this conclusion.
42 Discurso sobre La Situation de Espana, Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 325–45.Google Scholar
43 Veuillot, , loc. cit., p. xliiGoogle Scholar, makes it appear as if Narvaez's fall resulted from the other great speech of the same year, given on January 30, 1850, but this is an error. Schramm, , op. cit., pp. 231–34Google Scholar gives Donoso credit for bringing about the Duke's fall, and calls the action the “emancipation of the party of the moderados.” Donoso in a letter to Raczynski, of 06 22, 1851Google Scholar, Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 793Google Scholar, shows that he is himself cognizant of the effect of his speech upon the Duke's career.
44 “Ustedes tenían antes de febrero un Ministerio incorruptible y corruptor; pero nosostros somos más felices, pues tenemos un Ministerio corruptor y corrompido.” Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 344.Google Scholar
45 Especially in the series of lectures delivered in the Ateneo de Madrid in the winter of 1836–37, published as Lecciones de Derecho Político, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 211–331Google Scholar. Like the Ensayo, this important work is not in general pertinent to this section of the present study.
46 See footnote 20.
47 “Las Cortes se diferencian del monarca en que son una institutión, mientras que el monarca es una institutión, y es, además, el Poder. El monarca llena su misión obrando. Las Cortes llenan la suya interviniendo; el Poder obra sobre los súbditos; las Cortes, en nombre de la súbditos, intervienen en los actos del monarca, para que estos actos sean saludables para los individuos y beneficiosos para los pueblos; cuando el monarca deja de obrar y las Cortes dejan de intervenir, el monarca olvida su misión, las Cortes olvidan su misión, la socidad desfallece; cuando el monarca niega el derecho de intervenir a las Cortes y cuando las Cortes usurpan el derecho de obrar, el monarca y las Cortes dejan de ser instituciones tutelares y se convierten en instituciones tiránicas, en instituciones invasoras.” Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 345.Google Scholar
48 “sucede con frecuencia que la voluntad del Poder no Ilega a formularse en ley, y sucede siempre que … tiene que andar largo trecho, tiene que sufrir varias purificariones sucesivas, tiene que allanar obstáculos y qua veneer resistencias; pero ni la resistencia, ni los obstáculos, ni la distancia, ni las purificaciones son pane para alterar naturaleza del mandate….” Ibid., p. 353.
49 Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 9.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., p. 780.
51 Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 360–3.Google Scholar
52 Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 17–22.Google Scholar
53 While in the main Donoso's evaluation of the aristocracy in Spanish history may pass unchallenged, it should be noted that he chose to ignore for the moment the fact that the Church had been slow to support Isabel II and had in fact preferred her uncle, the Pretender. Don Carlos' following among the “people” was also far from insignificant, especially with the rural population. Donoso must have had this in mind five years later when he advised the King of Prussia not to have an “excessive confidence” in the peasants; letter to Raczynski, , Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 770.Google Scholar
54 La Ley Electoral, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 185–205.Google Scholar
55 On at least one occasion his fellow-conservatives apparently thought that it was wise to restrain him in his denunciation of the opposition, because it was becoming violent and personal. Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 913.Google Scholar
56 Supra, p. 542.Google Scholar
57 Discurso Sobre Culto y Clero, Obras Campletas, Vol. II, pp. 23–33.Google Scholar
58 The word is intended to convey exactly the opposite sense to that which it cus tomarily carries in English.
59 Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 350.Google Scholar
60 Supra, p. 534.Google Scholar
61 Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
62 The practical effect of the decision of the Commission was anti-liberal. Interestingly, however, it coincides in part with the view taken by the Supreme Court of the United States in connection with the libel trial of a newspaper editor, Balzac v. Puerto Rico, 258 U. S. 298.
63 Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 10.Google Scholar
64 “Hoy dia, señores, presenciamos un espectáculo nuevo en la Historia, nuevo en el mundo; ¿ cuando, señores, cuándo ha visto el mundo, sino hoy, que se vaya a la civilizatión por las armas y a la barbarie por las ideas? Ibid., p. 313.
In an article published in 1839 on the “Proyecto de Ley sobre estados excepcionales,” Donoso had strongly upheld the government in its proposal to broaden the powers of military commanders in the regions where the struggle against don Carlos still went on. Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 627–640.Google Scholar
65 Supra, p. 544.Google Scholar
66 Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 10.Google Scholar
67 Obras Completas, Vol. I, p. 351.Google Scholar
68 Intervention del Puelblo en la Impositión de Contribuciones, Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 641–63.Google Scholar
69 Obras Completas, Vol. II, p. 15.Google Scholar
70 See footnote 45.
71 Obras Completas, Vol. I, pp. 275–6Google Scholar. See also footnote 45, and the comment by de Cossio, , loc. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar
72 Discurso Sobre La Dictadura, Obras Completas, Vol. II, pp. 187–204Google Scholar. Several important aspects of the speech do not pertain to the section of the present study published here.
73 Embassy despatch of September 24, 1852, Obras Completes, Vol. II, p. 752.Google Scholar
74 “Los' pueblos se resistirán siempre a reconocer la potestad en la inacción y la legitimidad en una fuerza desttuctora, y esas potestades ociosas a un riempo mismo y terribles no se muestran a las naciones sino como implacables tiranos, ni ponen término a sus tiranías sino para entrar en un reposo absolute y en una ociosidad indolente. Sólo aquella potestad que ejerce una acción benéfica y continua y que gobierna los pueblos con un imperio templado es poderosa para hacer blanda su obediencia para caurivar sus voluntades y para ganarse sus aficiones.” Dictamen Sobre La Reforma Constitutional de 1837, Obras Complete, Vol. II, p. 4.Google Scholar
