Although numbered XII, this is the second volume to appear in a series which aims to provide anthologies of the major writers on political philosophy in the Spanish-speaking world. The previous volume was devoted to Domingo F. Sarmiento and Juan B. Alberdi of Argentina. (See HAHR, LXVII, 462.) For this book, the editors have turned to the nineteenth-century Spanish political philosopher Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853). A number of important writings are included, beginning with the essay, La, Ley Electoral (1836), and concluding with the famous Letter to Cardinal Fornari on the Errors of our Times, which is presumed to have had some influence on the shaping of the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX. The most important work, and one which occupies more than a third of text, is the Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism published in 1851. In this work, which is the mature expression of his ideas, one can see the transformation from the moderate Liberalism of the earlier Donoso Cortés, who supported the party of María Cristina against the Carlists, to the still open-minded but more Catholic political outlook of his later years. It was this outlook which informed a generation of Catholic intellectuals throughout the Spanish-speaking world who turned their backs on positivism and Marxism.
The editors of the series, Guillermo A. Lousteau Heguy and Salvador María Lozada, are to be congratulated upon their plan to make available this collection of the best in Hispanic American political thought, and students of the history of ideas will look forward to the nineteen volumes to come. Regrettably, however, the editors have not seen fit to provide the reader with some critical analysis of the various works included. This lack is especially regrettable in the ease of the frequently misunderstood Donoso Cortés. Nor have they employed the expected technical devices to inform the reader whether the works are reproduced in full or in part, or where else they may be encountered in print.
