SOURCE: Stoetzer, O. Carlos. “The Political Ideas of Andrés Bello.” International Philosophical Quarterly, 23, no. 4 (December 1983): 395-406.

[In the following essay, Stoetzer examines Bello's political views and how personal and environmental influences manifest themselves in his logic, opinions, and literature.]

I

Andrés Bello (1781-1865), the eminent Venezuelan philosopher and statesman who later chose Chile as his homeland and whose bicentennial was just celebrated in 1981, remains Spanish America's greatest humanist. The extraordinary work of this true scholar still echoes in our own times and radiates his beneficial influence.

Three distinct phases span his life: his formative years in Venezuela, from his birth in 1781 to the establishment of the Caracas junta in 1810; the second and maturing phase, his English exile in London from 1810 to 1829, full of hardships but also intellectually rewarding; and finally, his third and last phase in Chile from 1829 to his death in 1865, where he was always the great teacher, but also worked as a Senator, a government advisor, and as director of his host country's international policies. It was here in Santiago de Chile that his fertile mind produced his most significant works and where his presence and activities had the most profound impact on all social spheres.

His works, published in Chile in the years 1881-1893 in 15 volumes, and in Caracas during 1960-1969 in 23 volumes, cover an extraordinary variety of subjects. They include his most famous works: the Filosofía del entendimiento, in philosophy; his “Silva a la agricultura, de la zona tórrida” in poetry; his Gramática de la lengua castellana, in philology, still the best Spanish grammar to this day; his Chilean civil code, in law, which was taken as a model in Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, and his Principios del derecho de gentes, in international law, which turned him into the founder of Latin American international law.

Several factors influenced the political thought of Andrés Bello. First and foremost were his personality and temperament, characterized by his virtues of modesty, harmony, and balance; his sense of responsibility and duty; his wisdom, his respect for life and for human rights. Bello was deeply rooted in tradition, but at the same time this was not in a negative, sterile, or even reactionary manner, but instead represented more an evolutionary concept, thus adjusting to changing times. Bello was a realist; he was also aristocratic, with an outgoing nature. His entire character emphasized generosity in the best tradition of the rising liberal creed. Thus, the most striking element of his personality was one of avoiding extremes and approaching life and political realities with wisdom and tolerance. His character thus mirrored in an extraordinary way several of the main philosophic currents based on common sense or on eclecticism.

In the second place, Bello was much influenced by the European thought of the age. Already as a student in Caracas he felt the impact of the personality and the ideas of Alexander von Humboldt, and later this influence of European thought was further strengthened when he arrived in England as one of the three members of the famous diplomatic mission which the recently established government of Caracas had entrusted to Simón Bolívar (1810-1812). Bello, who had been one of the three teachers of Bolívar, was the official secretary of the mission, and his arrival in London was eventually to lead to almost two decades of uninterrupted residence and work in Great Britain (1810-1829). In the words of his biographer Rafael Caldera, “Bello was the life and soul of the Captaincy General of Caracas from 1801 to 1810,”¹ and by the time he joined the diplomatic mission he “… was already a trained humanist, but in London he was able to acquire wide learning and gain the scholarly refinement which made possible his later work.”² London at that time was not only the headquarters of the resistance to Napoleon, but the homeland of constitutional government, of responsible ministers, neutrality of the crown, religious tolerance, freedom of the press and assembly. It was also the center of Spanish and Spanish American exiles,³ such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, the Ecuadorean José Joaquin Olmedo, the Colombians García del Río and José Fernández Madrid, and the Spaniard José María Blanco. It was also in London that Bello negotiated with personalities like the Duke of Wellington and became personally acquainted with influential thinkers like Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. Here in England he was profoundly influenced by the British political and constitutional environment and by the several currents of thought, mainly the Scottish School, Kant's philosophy, and Cousin's Eclecticism.

This English influence, further enhanced by his two English marriages (1815-1821; 1824),⁴ coupled to his own strong and serious personality, resulted in a very successful and happy attempt to find reasonable and wise solutions to all problems. However, despite his long stay in England, Bello never became a European or British thinker; he remained faithful to his South American roots and his English connection produced a rather rare and extraordinary harmonious blending that resulted in great benefits to the various countries he served.

Besides becoming the great journalist and poet, educator and philologist, Bello also delved into philosophy, law, and political science. With his Filosofía del entendimiento he became a philosopher in his own right, and both his scholarly work and his diplomatic performance, first in London and later in Chile, earned him a great reputation as an authority in the law of nations and as an able South American statesman. During his long stay in England, Bello continued to serve the Venezuelan junta after 1812, and in the 1820s he was Secretary of the Chilean Legation under the Guatemalan Antonio José de Irisarri (1823-1824), and later from 1825 to 1829 Secretary of the Colombian Legation with Manuel José Hurtado and Fernández Madrid; in 1827 he headed the Colombian Mission in London.

II

Bello's political thought is, first of all, contained by analogy in his Filosofía del entendimiento. Furthermore, much of his political philosophy is found in his Principios de derecho de gentes, in his official and personal correspondence, signed or not, when he served the governments of Caracas, Chile and Colombia, and, of course, in the writings, official or otherwise, in Chile (1829-1865); the latter cover not only the official documents as a member of the Chilean Chancery but also articles which he published in El Araucano. Finally, the single most important document of the period from which we can further deduce his political philosophy is the famous Chilean Constitution of 1833, and although he was not directly responsible for its elaboration, it is known that Bello was very much involved in the matter.⁵ His name did not officially appear as a matter of tact and delicacy, since he was not a born Chilean and had arrived only a few years before the constitution saw the light of day.

To understand Bello's political thought it is also necessary to take into account his basic belief in God and in the law of nature, since everything else flows logically from this essential intellectual premise. Bello's firm belief in a Supreme Being represents, thus, the religious and philosophic basis which in turn furnishes us the key to his political ideas. In his Filosofía del entendimiento—Chapter IX dealing with the relation of cause and effect—Bello stated that

From effects we infer causes, as from causes effects, through the linking of phenomena we call laws of nature. If we see a movement in a different direction from that of a free-falling object, we infer that it was produced by a push. If we see a fruit, we cannot doubt that it was developed and formed in a plant by the ordinary procedure of vegetation. If we see order, agreement of parts, means directed toward the attainment of an end, we deduce from that the existence of a will that planned the means, and of a power that put them in action. In this manner we were led to knowledge of the adored Author of nature. The marvellous harmony of the universe where each part seems to have been made to accord with the others, and all agree in the conservation and propagation of animate beings; … this marvellous harmony, these correlations, this order, forces us to recognize an intelligent cause, endowed with superior power and wisdom, beyond all comparison and measure to those that man employs in his works.⁶

Following logically this argument, Bello pointed out that this harmony compelled him to recognize

… an all powerful Author and legislator whose will has established the connection of phenomena of which the general order is the result. The power of lesser causes is finite and desired, and that of the primary cause is infinite and original … God willed that there be light, and there was light, is a concrete but complete expression of the original causal relation.⁷

For Bello, then, the existence of a creative will, of an Eternal Being, of God, was, as he repeats it, “of an irrefutable evidence.”⁸ The principle of causality was the work of God, was “one of the laws established by God.”⁹ From this discussion Bello turned to the question of free will and continued:

The freedom of the first cause is original and unlimited; the freedom of the human spirit is derived and finite; it is a faculty impressed on man just like all the other faculties which his soul and body enjoy. A voluntary action of man has consequently its immediate cause in the same human spirit which respectively has its own in the creative spirit. Thus the freedom or free will of man, when it exists, not less than the power or action of each one of the created things acknowledges divine essence, sovereignly free as sovereignly powerful, as its only source. Thus, on the first cause depend universally all the causes that constitute the phenomenal connections.¹⁰

Bello argued that there did not exist any people or race which did not have some notion of a Supreme Being, and in this respect quoted the famous saying of Voltaire, with whom otherwise he would have little in common, that “… si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer,”¹¹ and looking further, he stated:

… in order that man be truly virtuous, in order that in the most obscure place, and in complete solitude he be willing, if necessary, to sacrifice his very life to duty, it is necessary that he view it as a law emanating from God; it is necessary that he firmly believe that his actions, even if the world ignore them, are known and appreciated by an infallible judge; by a judge that permeates the most profound depths of the soul and is witness to our most intimate thoughts.¹²

Applying this conviction to the world in which we live, Bello then pointed out:

Supreme Intelligence is not only the principle of order, but the type of the perfection of order; and since justice, truth, beneficence constitute the very essence of moral order whose laws the Creator has marked in the conscience and the heart of man, it is necessary that the Principle of order be absolutely just, true and beneficent.¹³

God, the Supreme Being, was thus the dispenser of life and happiness; He profoundly disburses life in the air, on earth, in water, and this profusion of life extends not only to the incalculable number of living beings but also to the millions and millions of the microscopic world, and without doubt, also to all planets of our solar system.¹⁴

Bello realized that not everything was happiness. He affirmed that it was true that the happiness of the living beings was interrupted by sorrow and often by the most painful experience. Was it not true, asked Bello that sorrow sharpened pleasure and that “…, pleasure could be less pleasing, would become dull, would make us totally insipid, without the alternatives which from time to time interrupt it in order to make its enjoyment more desirable and intense.”¹⁵ However, Bello continued, without this mixture of pleasure and pain, the most beautiful of God's works, virtue, could not exist, and virtue supposed temptation, struggles, painful privations, sacrifices. Virtue was one of the main elements that composed the moral order, the world of free agencies.¹⁶ The sufferings of man were, then, on one side, a means of improvement, and on the other, a pledge of immortality. “Thus, even in them glitters divine beneficence,”¹⁷ and he ended with the question:

… If reason takes us up to the edge of an infinite settlement of mysteries and enigmas, don't we know at least enough to fill us with confidence in the goodness of that Being who did not judge it unworthy of his greatness to provide for the wants of his most humble and brutish creatures?¹⁸

In Bello's part on logic, and more specifically, in his Chapter I on knowledge, he made it clear that in his reasoning he proceeded from the principle of the stability of the laws of nature, that his observations were based on the stability of certain connections, that given a cause, a certain effect necessarily followed, that is, that given the preceding phenomenon, the second phenomenon necessarily followed.¹⁹ The principle of stability of natural laws was a priori knowledge in the Kantian sense; phenomena did not follow one another accidentally.²⁰ Bello who so often discussed and adhered to the Scottish School dealt in this context with the concept of common sense pointing out that:

The primary elements of reason, axioms, truths that have a complete certainty and which are found within reach of all, are the peculiar objects of common sense, a denomination to which some give a more extensive meaning than others and which has been much abused in modern times because the limits have not been drawn within which the jurisdiction of this unimpeachable tribunal must be circumscribed.²¹

This quotation from Bello's Filosofía del entendimiento tells us a great deal and by analogy shows us the general tendency of his political thought. Also, in his study of logic another topic is interesting for our discussion. In his Chapter VIII dealing with the causes of error, Bello argued that in the realm of facts general principles would give us only approximate truths: each one of them would express an isolated phenomenal connection; and in nature phenomenal connections are mixed up and continuously disturb each other. Hence, general principles were inapplicable to real facts, and this was the reason why the mere theorist frequently exposed himself in practical applications to the ridicule of those he scorned for the inferiority of learning. As an example Bello mentioned mechanics and stated that here yardstick and weight were disregarded. The level was considered as an inflexible mathematical line; strings as mathematical lines of perfect flexibility; the subject matter in this science thus entered the domain of geometric demonstrations, but its theorems represented natural phenomena in an inaccurate way. A machine adjusted to them would produce movements very different from those calculated.²² Bello then applied this same principle to the reality of political life:

… In the same way, politics reduces the various forms of governments to certain general classes to which we attribute certain characteristic tendencies; and notwithstanding that every government is more or less mixed, if not in its legal theory at least in its way of operating and in its real effects, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy as if there were political institutions that corresponded exactly to our definitions. There is more. Assuming a perfectly pure form of government, its effects would be modified largely by the concurrence of an endless number of causes: the antecedents of the people ruled by it, the climate, the religion, the industrial condition, the intellectual culture, and various others; all things that operating jointly produce complex results that are very difficult to evaluate. From this follows the stormy and brief duration of some improvised institutions whose articles are so many more demonstrative deductions of abstract principles but only calculated for a people in abstract, or for a people that lacked special firmness that would contradict or modify them, a supposition that is morally impossible.²³

It is easy, in the above discussion, to see in Bello a distant echo of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas' mixed regime as well as somewhat closer the echo of Bodin and Montesquieu. However, demonstrating further his wisdom and justice, harmony and common sense, Bello stated that, on the other hand, if mere practical men were endowed with a certain insight in their views and plans, it was only within the restricted circle of their daily experience; they could not go a step beyond. They were incapable of applying their knowledge to new combinations of circumstances; they were incapable of filling the important posts that extensive ideas require; incapable even of enriching the very acts that they exercise with original inventions.²⁴ Thus, showing again his middle-of-the-road approach, his via media, he concluded that there were, therefore,

… two opposite habits equally rich in error: that of the mind which disparages specialties and is occupied with abstractions and generalizations, and that of those men who, paying exclusive attention to the aspects and forms that are within reach of daily experience, do not lift themselves up to general principles and extensive views.²⁵

III

Bello's Principios de derecho de gentes (1832) includes much of his political thought. Written between 1831 and 1832, it was actually based on a lifelong interest in both international law and international relations, but it was in Chile that he was able to put into practice his extraordinary knowledge and expertise.

His belief in God and in the traditional law of nature is here repeated: God is the author of international law and reason only interprets it. The law of nations was, thus, for Bello the natural law applied to the different peoples of the globe, spread over the earth as one great family and in which all had the same obligations as the individuals of the human species among themselves.²⁶ Every law presumed a sanction through which, as he said, the common good becomes the specific condition of the individual good, but as to the various sanctions which confer on natural law all its dignity, one was that of human conscience, and the other was religious.²⁷ Bello was, thus, in perfect agreement with the traditional natural law of Antiquity and of the Christian Middle Ages, in which natural law was the echo of Divine Law, and positive law, to be just, had to be in keeping with this norm. After all, natural law was supposed to be reasonable, generally acceptable, and simple. Everything that was right, according to the nature of things, was part of the natural law. Do good and avoid evil, Justice must be done, Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you, pacta sunt servanda, are all principles of natural law.²⁸

The influence of natural law on international law was clearly interwoven with Roman law. The early Roman law showed the ability to adjust to the needs of an imperial civilization and this strength was made possible by admitting side by side with the jus civile a more liberal and flexible law, the jus gentium, regarded as simple and reasonable so that it was easily recognized. In medieval times, natural law operated within a Christian and Scholastic framework. It flowered in Spain's Golden Age with the magni Hispani while in northern Europe it was attacked in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and later dismissed in Protestant countries. Natural law continued to be the basis, however, for philosophy in Hispanic American colonial times and, as seen in Bello's Filosofía del entendimiento and Principios de derecho de gentes, still maintained a very strong position in the nineteenth century, clearly demonstrating the correct judgment of Heinrich Rommen about the eternal recurrence of natural law.²⁹ Moreover, Bello's natural law was not the rationalistic version of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which ushered in the justification of Enlightened Despotism on one side, and Constitutionalism on the other. The old Scholastic natural law—to which Bello also adhered—never proclaimed certain definite forms of government but was based on the common good and on the regimen mixtum with participation of the people,³⁰ a concept Bello followed, as we have seen earlier, and as will be exemplified in the Chilean Constitution of 1833.

The same traditional and Scholastic point of view shines clearly when Bello talked about the meaning of law and where within the characteristic formula of quid pro quo the rights must be circumscribed by duties.³¹ How different from our own times where human rights are always invoked, proclaimed, and defended, and human obligations are seldom mentioned! Bello, though certainly not a Scholastic thinker, and critical in his Filosofía del entendimiento of the Scholastic syllogism, took another Scholastic position when he considered sovereignty to be “originally” rooted in the nation.³² That had also been the point of view of José María Morelos in Art. 5 of the Mexican Constitution of Apatzingan (1814) and did not follow the Spanish Constitution of Cadiz of 1812, which preferred the more modern term “essentially.” Also, Bello's discussion of the separation and independence of states was based on the law of nature.

Bello's attachment to the traditional view of natural law also came to the fore in the case of the two Bolivian exiles in Chile about which he wrote in El Araucano, and in which he refuted their idea that there was no universal, immutable law of nature; without such a moral and legal basis utter confusion would arise. He pointed out, on the contrary, that it seemed to him irrefutable that there were rules of international law which without prior consent of the nations must be obeyed.³³ In the same case he referred repeatedly to the existence of natural law and to this law as the foundation of the law of nations. As he said:

… The special and perfect obligation to keep an agreement has its foundation in the general and perfect obligation to keep agreements which is pure natural law. And thus one more evidence of such a law. In reality it is the foundation of all the others. Without it, none other would exist.³⁴

Going a step further in this discussion, Bello argued that the government not only has to obey its own constitution but all laws, and among the latter were also the laws of nations; in case of conflict between the law of nations and the laws of Chile the government would try to harmonize and choose that which protects and strengthens peace and security, not only for itself but for other nations as well. Several times Bello refuted the arguments of the two Bolivian exiles based on a political ideology more in keeping with the French Revolution, the idéologues and the Utilitarians, and concerned with liberty, property, security, pointing out that his political views would in reality protect these principles more than theirs—a system which did not acknowledge natural law, and thus no human rights.

Bello's philosophy, based on a Supreme Being and on the existence of a law of nature, determined his political beliefs. It showed not only his classical background but his solid conservative and traditional foundation, which was part and parcel of his life and his personality and which can be seen in all his writings. His traditional philosophy already came to the fore in the “Reply to the Spanish Regency”³⁵ which was written by the younger Bello, as is generally acknowledged, and in which he justified the establishment of the Caracas junta of 1810 on the basis of equality and denied the right of the Peninsular authorities to rule over the overseas areas. This was the Scholastic pactum translationis which was the lever for the Spanish American emancipation: power is given by God to the people who in turn transfer this authority to a ruler; when the ruler has no legitimate successor this authority returns whence it came. This situation arose when Napoleon forced the abdication of the legitimate King Ferdinand VII and illegally put his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The Spanish people then rose up in arms, setting up a Junta Suprema Central and then a Regency on behalf of the deposed king, and arrogating to themselves the same rights as the former monarch. The Spanish Americans denied this right to the Spanish authorities—the Regency was entitled to rule over Spain and defend it against the French but not to demand obedience from Spanish America, since the overseas areas had exactly the same rights of equality as the Peninsula, rights which in the sixteenth century had been granted by the Spanish kings to the early conquistadors. Caracas was thus justified in establishing a junta, a symbol of deep loyalty to king and empire, and not to be construed as disobedience and rebellion.³⁶ These legal arguments were very clear and sound, and Bello thus demonstrated his great knowledge based on the traditional teachings of law in colonial colleges and universities. The document expressed its fidelity to the “beloved sovereign King Ferdinand VII” and “its true and cordial sentiments of brotherly love” to the Peninsular Spaniards, but considered their claims to rule the overseas areas illegal,³⁷ since with the usurpation of the Spanish throne by the French, authority had returned to the various peoples of the Empire. After all, in line with the proprietory character of the Indies, loyalty of the various Spanish American areas was never to Spain but solely to the legitimate monarch. The “Reply” ended with the hope that if Spain set up a legitimate authority, then the Caracas junta would give the greatest aid in the pursuit of its “holy struggle”³⁸ against Joseph Bonaparte.

In a very interesting comment on the Spanish American republics, Bello gives us a clear concept of his political views. The independence of America, he said, excited the enthusiasm of the friends of principles and the fear of the enemies of liberty, and many had hoped that an entire continent based on similar values of history and origin, customs, and religion would rise up to establish a respected community of nations which in time would balance European politics; but few foresaw that this path would be paved with lots of bloodshed in view of political inexperience and the legacy of the colonial past. Others, he continued, believed that Spanish America was incapable of developing free institutions, since they were in opposition to Spanish America's traditions. No doubt, Bello pointed out, the United States was different from the Spanish American republics—in the former social and economic conditions were more equal and equitable, in the latter a few were familiar with the exercise of great political rights, whereas the majority had neither enjoyed them nor held them as important. Thus, in the United States it had been possible to give liberal principles all their latitude while the South American republics, though independent from Spain, were facing a numerous and powerful class with whom liberal principles simply collided. This was for Bello the most important distinction between the two areas,³⁹ and he drew the following conclusion which parallels precisely his political work in Chile:

Indeed, to introduce more or less plausible constitutions and to balance the powers ingeniously, to proclaim guarantees and to show liberal principles, are rather easy things given the state of progress which the social sciences have reached in our times. But to know deeply the disposition and the needs of the peoples toward whom the legislation must be applied, to distrust the seductions of brilliant theories, to listen with attention and impartiality to the voice of experience, to sacrifice beloved opinions to the common good, is not the most common in the childhood of nations, and in a crisis where a great political transition such as ours inflames all minds. Institutions which in theory seem worthy of the highest admiration because they are in conformity with the principles established by the most famous writers find for their observance invincible obstacles when applied in practice; perhaps they are the best which the study of politics in general may give, but not, as those which Solon elaborated for Athens, the best which could be given to a certain people. The science of legislation, not much studied among ourselves when we did not play an active part in the government of our countries, could not acquire all the necessary attention from the beginning of our emancipation, so that the Spanish American legislators would make of them meditated, judicious and exact applications—a much surer norm than that which abstract maxims and the general rule can provide.⁴⁰

Surely, there is here an echo of Edmund Burke's hostility to abstract political systems and his predilection for a prescribed constitution. Furthermore, the statement explicitly excludes an extreme democratic solution.

However, Bello was a balanced thinker, a man of the via media. Immediately thereafter he argued against an exaggeration of this view which, so he said, would be even worse than all the revolutionary zeal. Such a policy would do great damage to Spanish American patriotism, and obviously, was in contradiction to the spirit which animated the struggle against tyranny. He acknowledged the need to adapt the governmental system to the national localities, customs, and character, but this should by no means be interpreted as if Spanish America could never live under the shadow of free institutions and could never have the healthy guarantees which secure freedom, the patrimony of any human society that merits such a name. In any case, Spanish America was living a period of transition, and the peoples must suffer certain calamities because they represented the first steps of their political career, but this would come to an end and Spanish America would play an important role in world affairs, a role which it was called upon in view of its territorial extension, its resources and other elements of prosperity. Chile, he pointed out, was indeed lucky to be an island of peace and stability due to three elements: its institutions, the spirit of order which characterized the national temperament, and the lessons of past tragedies.⁴¹ These comments appeared in El Araucano⁴² and demonstrated in a nutshell his entire political philosophy: liberal-conservative or conservative-liberal. These ideas were incorporated in the Constitution of 1833 which gave Chile the stability and greatness for which it was justly renowned. As Bello himself stated: “… In Chile, the peoples are armed with the law; but until now these weapons have only been used for the maintenance of order and for the enjoyment of the most precious social goods.”⁴³

IV

With independence restored in 1817, Chile had experimented with various liberal alternatives: from the extreme of Enlightened Despotism (Constitutions of 1818 and 1822) to the extreme of revolutionary zeal with the very moralistic and Rousseauian Constitution of 1823, the federalism of José Miguel Infante (Constitution of 1826) and finally José Joaquín de Mora's idéologue attempt to mediate between both centralism and federalism (Constitution of 1828). The battle of Lircay, 1830, ended the liberal period and opened the conservative republic which lasted until 1861 and which was based on one of the most realistic, and hence, best Hispanic American charters: the Constitution of 1833, which endured until 1925, even though after 1861 it was gradually liberalized and democratized to fit changing times.

Bello had arrived in Chile in the midst of growing anarchy and soon got involved in a polemic with Mora who remained the intellectual leader of the liberal faction. Bello joined the conservative Colegio de Santiago while Mora taught at the Liceo de Chile which he had founded in 1828. In 1830 El Araucano, the official government newspaper, saw the light of day and Bello was charged with its section on foreign news, letters, and science. In 1831 began the constitutional reform to the Charter of 1828, which in many respects had followed the venerable Spanish Constitution of Cádiz of 1812, and the Convention which initiated this study was also the one that conferred Chilean citizenship on Bello (1832). This constitutional reform produced the Constitution of 1833 whose main authors were the conservative Mariano Egaña and the more liberal Manuel José Gandarillas, with Bello acting behind the scenes with much advice. It was for the first time in Chile's independent life a realistic constitution, totally in line with the ideas and ideals of Bello's via media.

The Constitution of 1833 was an echo of the July Monarchy and of the conservative movement of the Doctrinaire Liberals of Maine de Biran and Victor Cousin in philosophy, and of Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard in politics. Linked to this group was also the legendary Benjamin Constant, although not strictly speaking a Doctrinaire Liberal. They were aristocratic and elitist but not reactionary, progressive though not radical or idéologue, and they produced a very workable and efficient political program. This group had realized that the rising forces of industrialization and capitalism, the middle classes, needed a political system which gave the bourgeoisie both power and security. They opted for constitutional monarchy which seemed to be the middle way between the abuse and excesses of the Revolution and the extreme of arbitrariness of both the Napoleonic system and the Enlightened Despotism of the eighteenth century. Cousin, the founder of Eclecticism, had provided the philosophic foundation for the Doctrinaire Liberal movement: influenced by German idealism and historicism and fighting sensualism and materialism, he had also absorbed much of the philosophy of the Scottish School and was a disciple of Herder. Cousin's eclectic spiritualism—defending healthy, noble and generous ideas which did not go against religion and the prevailing social order—facilitated the conciliation of the extremes and created an atmosphere in which a settlement along the lines of the via media became a tangible possibility.⁴⁴

The man who in Chile had by now assumed dictatorial powers was Diego Portales, the rare exception in Latin American politics since he was a businessman—the Duque de Mauá would later be the Brazilian version—and although he was not a member of the Convention and did not participate in its deliberations, it no doubt reflected his political thought. Portales found in Bello the right man for a strong regime, in line with the Hispanic American temperament and the Chilean reality of the time, based on the former monarchical tradition but within a republican framework and coupled to an evolutionary concept of progress, as it gradually developed later. Bello, of course, by temperament and character, by education and inclination had no use for any abstract general ideas and certainly not for the utopian and messianistic message of Bentham's Utilitarianism or Rousseau's totalitarian democracy. Also, Bello understood very early as few did that Spain and the Spanish heritage were not to be blamed for every shortcoming. He was thus opposed to the tavola rasa concept of many of his Chilean friends, most pipiolos, who advocated a rather naive course in trying to deny the past and to reject the Spanish heritage. On the contrary, he advocated a government based on the realities of the country which would gradually evolve into a modern state, a synthesis of tradition and progress.

The Constitution of 1833, more realistic than those of 1818, 1822, 1823, 1826 and 1828, showed this philosophy and was fundamentally the Chilean version of the Doctrinaire Liberal movement. It manifested the influence of Spanish Liberalism and joined to it the traditional and conservative thought of Spain, England and France. The two-chamber system followed the Anglo-Saxon model and suffrage was restricted. The Senate acted as a fourth power—Constant's pouvoir neutre—in the sense that it took the role of a great moderating body. While the executive received ample powers, including extraordinary powers from Congress in case of emergencies, the Constitution also acknowledged individual rights in the sense Constant would have approved.

This elected monarchy within a republican form through a presidential term of five years, but with the possibility of one second term, left the President with the effective management of public affairs, a policy which Minister Portales carried out with great statesmanship. It allowed only the Catholic faith—like the Constitution of Cádiz—maintained the mayorazgos (entailed estates), and generally symbolized the vision and the wisdom of an aristocracy which had witnessed the evil of the revolutionary creed to society and state and which was determined to lead Chile toward a better future through the adoption of a sound political organization. The Constitution of 1833, the application of Bello's own eclecticism, and an echo of the Doctrinaire Liberal movement and of Constant's liberalism mixed with traditional thought, was the effective instrument to accomplish this goal.⁴⁵ Chile was thus able beginning with the 1830s to avoid the extremes of tyranny and chaos, and to set up a sound, stable, and effective representative government in which political liberty was a fact. That was one of Bello's contributions to Chile and of his interpretation of human rights, which certainly were a reality and not a much touted fanfare with no basis whatsoever.

Summarizing, we will find in the political philosophy of Andrés Bello a belief in freedom within responsibility, “not the abstract rights of the French Revolution and of the modern Liberal, i.e., rights without duties; but what Edmund Burke calls the real rights of man.”⁴⁶ Bello's approach to human rights would be much more in line with the simple old maxim “the more responsibility the more freedom,” and thus his entire philosophy of man and the state followed very much traditional principles because it built on evidence in common sense and did not balk at mystery, was free of ‘postulates’ and admitted of no ‘myths’, very much the traditional Christian principles which originated in St. Augustine, were carried over by St. Thomas Aquinas, were redefined by the Spanish Golden Age, and found a reaffirmation in Burke.⁴⁷

Notes

1. Rafael Caldera, Andrés Bello. Philosopher, Poet, Philologist, Educator, Legislator, Statesman (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), p. 21.

2. Ibid., p. 23.

3. Cf. Vincente Llorens Castillo, Liberales y románticos. Una emigración española en Inglaterra (1823-1834) (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1954).

4. Caldera, p. 26.

5. Cf. Ricardo Donoso, “Prólogo,” in Andrés Bello, Obras completas (23 vols.; Caracas: Ministerio de Educación, 1950-1969), XVII: “Labor en el Senado de Chile,” pp. xlix-lxi. Cf. Also Simon Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1808-1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), p. 332.

6. Andrés Bello, Filosofía del entendimiento (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946), pp. 115-116.

7. Ibid., p. 117.

8. Ibid., p. 130.

9. Ibid., p. 131.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 132.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 137.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 138.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 139.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., pp. 328-29.

20. Ibid., p. 333.

21. Ibid., p. 342.

22. Ibid., p. 459.

23. Ibid., pp. 459-60.

24. Ibid., p. 460.

25. Ibid.

26. Bello, Obras completas, X: “Derecho Internacional,” pp. 13-14.

27. Ibid., pp. 14-15.

28. Cf. Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 11-29.

29. Cf. Heinrich Rommen, Die ewige Wiederkehr des Naturrechts (2d ed.; Munich: Kösel, 1947).

30. Ibid., p. 258.

31. Bello, Obras completas, X, 17.

32. Ibid., pp. 32-33. Cf. O. Carlos Stoetzer, El pensamiento político en la América española durante el período de la emancipación (1789-1825) (2 vols.; Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1966), II, 193-252, especially p. 232.

33. “La detención de los extranjeros” in El Araucano (Santiago de Chile), December 16 and 30, 1842; January 6, 1843 [643, 645; 647] in Bello, Obras completas, X, 477.

34. Ibid., p. 480. Cf. also ibid., p. 488.

35. Caracas, May 3, 1810.

36. Cf. Bello, Obras completas, X, 411-18.

37. Ibid., p. 413.

38. Ibid., p. 417.

39. Ibid., pp. 421-22.

40. Ibid., pp. 422-23.

41. Ibid., pp. 423-24.

42. El Araucano (Santiago de Chile), July 22, 1836 [#307].

43. Bello, Obras completas, X, 424-25.

44. Cf. O. Carlos Stoetzer, “Benjamin Constant and the Doctrinaire Liberal Influence in Hispanic America,” Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (Hamburg), II (1978), 145-65.

45. Ibid., pp. 158-59.

46. Moorhouse F. X. Millar, S. J., “The Modern State and Catholic Principles,” Thought, 12 (1937), 54.

47. Ibid., p. 63.