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ERA OF CONSTITUTION MAKING 233 the southern provinces. A political alliance, for mu- tual protection against attacks from abroad, was formed with Peru and Ecuador in 1856, Costa Rica soon after joining it. President Montt was elected to a second term in 1856; the elections for congress in 1858 were also carried by the government, though opposed by both the con- servative and liberal parties. But Manuel Montt, with his favorite minister Varas, who was to him what Por- tales had been to Prieto, governed Chile with pitiless severity. All attempts to introduce more progressive political institutions than such as tended to improve Chile for aristocrats, were summarily suppressed, while many leading liberals were driven from the country. Montt and Varas were the apostles of government by the classes, and they openly defied congress when con- gress was not in harmony with them. They formed'a new party in Chilean politics, the Montt-Varistas, be- lieving in aristocratic government, though allied at times with both the conservatives and the liberals. Against this iron government insurrections at last broke out in several places. The government's meas- ures of repression, made more odious by a law which placed the cities largely under the political control of the government, gave great dissatisfaction. For a time the clergy and the president had acted in harmon}', but a question arose which in the end ar- rayed the church against him. The expulsion of a sac- ristan from the cathedral gave rise to a dispute which caused two leading prelates, suspended by ecclesias- tical autliority, to have recourse to the supreme court. The court gave a decision which the archbishop dis- credited and with which he would not comply. This was the venerable Valdivieso. The government was enraged and would have banished the archbishop, per-