Comment briefly on the attitude of the puritans to literature in the nineteenth century

Comment briefly on the attitude of the puritans to literature in the 19th century.

The nineteenth century did not know the distinction between the left and right, but was torn by the difference no less cainita between moderate and exalted. The latter is a discrimination that has very little to do with the ideas professed, it refers to its radicalization and to the various strategies to make them work in practice. This was so because from Waterloo to the Great War, no political theory took root as strongly as liberalism. All Europeans with political backgrounds agreed on the basic notions of citizenship, religious tolerance, suffrage, parliamentarism, etc. But they differed in their scope and opportunity. The contemporary Spanish state was created on the ideas of political freedom and civil equality.

However, liberalism was far from being a homogeneous political theory. In nineteenth-century Spain two very different traditions coexisted and fought with each other: the “old policy” was represented by the first generation of Spanish liberals: the doceañistas, who came from a speculative and rationalist tradition, tending to the construction of utopias. They had formulated their theories translating philosophical systems and, in opposition to absolutism, had not faced the practical reality of power. When they did it during the Triennium, they managed to get the Spanish people to turn their back on their dogmatic radicalism in a short time. Its model was the “Great French Revolution” of 1789 and its political dogma, “popular sovereignty”. The “new policy” was represented by the ideals of a generation that emerged in the mid-1930s, when the death of Ferdinand VII finally opened the way from an absolutist regime to a constitutional regime. It was the romantic generation, who had not known exile or persecution, and who therefore had less accumulated grievances and resentments. Faced with the demolishing liberalism of the doceañistas, they were responsible for building a conservative liberalism. A liberalism based on empiricism and pragmatics, not speculative or systematic, based on the interpretation of tradition and institutions that had historically grown. They were double front fighters, their goal was to prevent the new representative government that was born in the middle of a civil war against absolutism, resulting in anarchy or tyranny, were men of the “fair mean.”

Origins of conservative liberalism

This new centrist vision was the one that triumphed politically in the doctrinaire formula of the “constitutional monarchy”, synthesis of the traditional rights (the Throne) and the new civil liberties (the Parliament). The ideals of this new generation came from the July Monarchy, the regime of Louis Philippe (the bourgeois king) in France, whose slogan was very clear: “Freedom consists only in the rule of law.” Outstanding thinkers and statesmen, such as Benjamin Constant, Royer-Collard, Guizot and the group of doctrinaires were developing the theory of “guarantees” to protect the rights of the individual against the interference of the State, they were developing postrevolutionary liberalism.

The historical origins of modern Spanish conservative liberalism can be placed around the crisis of May 1836. At that time in the Cortes the electoral law was debated. Prime Minister Mendizábal leaned towards a very restricted suffrage while the moderates were much more democratic. If we stick to the progressive label with which Mendizábal has gone down in history, we have to renounce the cliché according to which progressivism was a movement of popular and democratic roots. Mendizábal represented the interests of an Andalusian free-market plutocracy and its confiscation mocked the expectations of a large part of the population. It is logical that I would like to restrict the electoral body as much as possible.

Moderantism, on the other hand, had been split in two: a group led by Istúriz supported the criterion with which Mendizábal carried out the transfer of assets, but criticized the scope of his political reforms and was willing to revise the Royal Statute of 1834 in a much broader and liberal sense. This tendency of a democratic moderantism was the point of departure of the first centrists. A second group, split off from the first by the problem of conscience implicit in the acceptance of the confiscation, declared itself open to “possibilist Carlism” and gave rise to traditionalism and neo-Catholicism. His only slogan was “the order and strengthening of real power.” He was inspired by authors such as De Maistre and Lamennais, who insisted on setting limits to individualism in the name of the authority of the Church and the State.