learning and his influential relatives, was called by the disdainful epithets of clerk and schoolmaster, and was insulted every day to his face by the supercilious Chilians, my compatriots!"
Don José is partially right in saying this. In 1843 he founded and edited the periodical called "El Progreso," the first paper that had ever been printed in Santiago de Chili, the residence of learned Chilians. He also edited the "Argentine Herald," in behalf of his countrymen, unjustly abused by Rosas. Envy, jealousy, hatred, prejudice, and ill-will were his portion for a long time, growing out of his active effort to ameliorate evils. Rival papers heaped abuses upon him; he was sensitive to blame; his patriotic heart was doubly sore with the repeated and apparently incurable miseries of his country; the word foreigner, when applied to him, was a dagger in a heart like his that was ready to toil for his adopted country as if it were his own. The impetuosity of his nature was not yet softened even into apparent concession to a present evil. He was unceremonious in speaking the truth, and the truth is the sharpest of swords to the evil disposed or the apathetic. There was no peace for any one in his sphere who stood in the way of the reforms which he felt to be vital to the very existence of civilized society, certainly to the continuance of free governments in those unhappy countries. He did not make personal attacks, but the strife of pens waxed
of Santiago had condemned a robber who had stolen the candelabra of the Virgin in the Church of San Merced, "to serve as a schoolmaster in Copiapo for the term of three years," as they would have condemned him to be whipped or to labor in the Penitentiary.
