The above-mentioned article upon the first of these battles, followed by another upon the second, roused the generous sentiments of the people by its pathos, and earnestly appealed to the justice of the generation then in full enjoyment of the fruits of the great deeds whose contemporaries had of necessity received wounds as well as gifts from the rough hands of war. So timely was this appeal in behalf of a just claim to renown obscured by prejudice and malice, that it gained for its author, hitherto without a name, in two senses, a position in the unfamiliar theatre in which he had thus appeared, and for General San Martin the rank and pay of Captain-General that very year, and subsequently the tokens of gratitude due from a nation to its liberators, visible to-day in the equestrian statue erected to his memory in the finest boulevard of Santiago, facing the Andes and surrounded by the poplars which he himself had planted.
The party which was in the Chilian government at this time asked through one of the secretaries the concurrence of Señor Sarmiento at the approaching election. The first words Don Manuel Montt[1] said to him, were, "Ideas, sir, have no country." From that moment they understood each other. I wish I had space to delineate the character of Don Manuel Montt. "My meeting him in the path of my life," says Señor Sarmiento, in speaking of this gentleman, "gave a new phase to my existence, and if it attains any noble ends, I shall owe it to his aid opportunely tendered."
By request he took the editorship of the "Mercurio," which he successfully carried through the political campaign of that year, and he also founded and
- ↑ Then Minister of State in Chili.
