 The region where the confrontation between liberals and conservatives over the religious problem was most violent was Mexico, where the colonial church had been the most powerful. The first confrontation with the church took place in 1833, but the decisive blow to the church came with the “Reform Laws” in 1855–1863, which, among other measures, nationalized most of its property and established a separation between church and State. The political challenge that the church posed to the liberal regimes pushed some Mexican liberals to move beyond their constitutionalism and to press for social and economic reform. This was the case of José María Luis Mora (1794–1850), the most prominent Mexican liberal and whose liberal identity came to be centered on his anti-clericalism. He was a historian, politician, legislator, and a priest. His liberalism was strongly influenced by his admiration of the Cádiz constitution of 1812, the writings of Montesquieu and Constant, and by the course of political events that led him to assume anticlerical views. Mora began his career as a liberal intellectual as a partisan of constitutionalism. A constant theme in his writings is the defense of the “absolute” liberty of opinion and the criticism of any limits to freedom of the press. He argued that it is impossible to limit the freedom to think and to have opinions since men cannot divest themselves from their opinions through external force. Thus, he claimed, it is neither just nor convenient to prevent them from expressing their thoughts. The crucial point for public order, in his view, is that men observe the law regardless of the opinions that they may hold. He maintained that no principle of justice can ground the prohibition of doctrines considered false since men are fallible and the best or only means for arriving at knowledge of the truth is to subject doctrines to examination in a free discussion. The amendment of wrong opinions cannot be attained through prohibition but through the free circulation of ideas (Mora 1837: 491–5). Following Montesquieu, Mora placed great emphasis on the security of the person and affirmed the conception of civil freedom as the faculty of doing everything that the law does not expressly prohibit (Mora 1837: 504–6).