Lastarria was a politician, Bilbao an apocalyptic dreamer. He founded the "Society of Equality," which was a democratic club. A generous and radical nature, he criticised, in a celebrated article on _Chilian Sociability_ (1844), "the tradition, the ancient authority, the faith, the servile customs, the national apathy, the dogma of blind obedience, the respect for the established order, the hatred of innovation, and the persecution of the innovator," which he deplored in his native country. He gave a pitiless analysis of Chilian prejudices, and studied the national problems--commerce, education, marriage, taxation, the functions of Church and State--and answered them in a democratic sense. He was accused of immorality, blasphemy, and sedition. He also attacked the Constitution of 1833, and the minister Montt could not forgive him for this liberal campaign. Ten years later Bilbao was exiled for his leanings toward anarchy, and in Paris he became acquainted with Quinet and Lamennais, the evangelists of his democratic faith. In 1880, on his return to Chili, he resumed his inflammatory courses.
Montalvo in Ecuador represented the same liberal effort as Bilbao and Lastarria. But this democrat had read Montaigne and Voltaire; he was a master of satire, irony, and sarcasm. His contradictory nature united Lamartine's faith in democracy with the scepticism of the eighteenth century. He was not a politician merely, but a man of letters. His wide culture was revealed by the multiple forms in which his intellectual activity found an outlet. As an { 240} essayist, by his lyrical disorder, he recalled Carlyle. His harsh criticism of the national clergy in _La Mercurial Eclesiastica_ is as lively as an Italian _conte_. He imitated Cervantes with perfection; he could make a clever pastiche of _Don Quixote_. He knew his Byron, Milton, Lamartine, Racine, and the Latin and Spanish classics, and would have been the completest type of the humanist which the Latin New World has produced had not his restless spirit yielded too readily to the solicitations of politics.
In contrast to Garcia-Moreno, the Catholic dictator, Montalvo was the liberal free-lance; he could not forgive the _caudillo_ his long tyranny, his intolerant faith, his submission to the Pope as a supreme monarch. The Ecuadorian polemist believed in liberty and the republic; he detested the theocracy implanted by the Christian President.