The champions of liberalism defined the principles of the new social state; they were brilliant commentators, their subject being the ideas of French and Spanish philosophy. Their action in a society in which the old colonial prejudices were still triumphant was categorical and magistral. They created institutions and laws, and applied foreign doctrines to the troubles of the time. Sometimes they seemed inspired in the Biblical sense; they prophesied and condemned, as did Bilbao and Echeverria.
Lastarria, Bilbao, Montalvo, Vigil, and Sarmiento were the leading figures of this romantic period; { 237} with them intellectual activity was inseparable from politics. Lastarria and Bilbao opposed the authoritarianism of Chili; Montalvo and Vigil respectively, the clericalism of Ecuador and Peru; Sarmiento, the tyranny of Rosas. Their works were pamphlets, their theories were always practical: criticisms of contemporary reality, or constructive sketches of the State of the future.
Lastarria and Bilbao were the professors of liberalism in Chili. The liberalism of the first was tempered by the influence of Comte, and the study of philosophy and history; that of the second, indisciplined and prophetic, was eventually the bitter protest of a misunderstood evangelist.
Lastarria was the great Chilian reformer, as Bello was the prudent master who disciplined youth and defended tradition and the classic ideology. He was, like Bilbao, a pupil of Bello's, but to the conservative doctrines of the latter he opposed a generous liberalism. He was professor of legislation at the National Institute of Santiago from 1841, and from his professorial chair he criticised Chilian laws and prejudices. At first he followed Bentham in his lectures on constitutional law, and then the French liberals. He was influenced by Herder, by Edgar Quinet, a jurist and a disciple of Krause, and by Ahrens. Finally he accepted certain ideas of Comte's--for instance, the theory of the Three Estates--and endeavoured to reconcile his teaching with that of John Stuart Mill, Toqueville, and Laboulaye.
He believed, as did the romantics, in indefinite progress, liberty, universal harmony, and the power of man as against the inevitability of physical laws; in 1846 his political studies won the eulogy of Edgar Quinet. From a liberal standpoint he studied the evolution of Chili from the Conquest to the Republic.