[Illustration: PLAZA DEL ARMAS, SANTIAGO.]
Among these immigrants was the famous Ambrose O'Higgins, a poor Irish lad, who landed at Buenos Aires, made his way to Chile, started as a peddler, became an army contractor, made a fortune, got a commission in the army, distinguished himself in an expedition against the Araucanians, ingratiated himself with everybody by his wit, courage, and good-natured shrewdness, and finally was selected as captain-general. He ruled the country wisely and well until promoted to be viceroy at Lima. His successors were mostly able and honest men, and under their government the natural causes making for the prosperity of Chile had free scope. Wealth increased, and with it love of display, honours, and letters. Santiago became a real capital, the favourite residence of the landed aristocracy and a social centre where fashions were prescribed. The English war into which France pushed Spain in 1796 much damaged Chilean commerce, but not sufficiently to stop the impulse already received. The old ignorant content with Spanish rule gave place to a growing demand for the removal of all restrictions, and the appetite for commercial freedom grew with what it fed on.
Chile was still comparatively poor and backward. The rude population were engaged in a harsh struggle with fierce savages and in laying the foundations of material prosperity. Most of these people were the descendants of Indians accustomed for centuries to implicit obedience to a rustic, unlettered aristocracy. The genius of the race was rather practical than ideal, and the long, careless government by men invariably chosen for their military abilities rather than their qualities as civil administrators had not tended to make Chile a fertile soil for the development of revolutionary ideas. Chilean society was less favourably constituted for sudden changes than that of Buenos Aires--the boom town of the time, with its active commerce, its restless recently arrived population,--or that of the northern viceroyalties, controlled by professional and office-holding classes and parish priests.
Two or three hundred families held most of the lands of Chile, and the power of this aristocracy was especially predominant in the provinces around Santiago. In the southern provinces long wars had thinned the native population and dispossessed the original grantees. Estates were more widely distributed and opinion more radical, but in the rest of the country the newer immigrants had been forced to accept the system, and the comparatively few families who owned the land and thereby controlled the means of subsistence of the whole people, enjoyed unquestioned ascendancy. But conservative as this aristocracy was, among its members there rankled a profound jealousy of the Spanish officials who wrung excessive taxes from their reluctant fingers; who enforced the Spanish regulations forbidding the culture of grapes, olives, and tobacco; who until recently had closed the ports, cutting off the profitable sale of crops, and compelling the payment of extravagant prices for manufactured goods; and most irritating of all, who still monopolised the lucrative offices.