 José Victorino Lastarria (1817–1888) was the most prominent Chilean liberal intellectual in the nineteenth century. He was a lawyer, a public intellectual, a central literary figure, and a politician who held official positions. His thinking was importantly influenced by John Stuart Mill’s rendering of positivist philosophy in his Auguste Comte and Positivism, and by Émile Littré, who popularized Comte’s positivism. Along with Federico Errazuriz, Lastarria wrote the “Basis for Reform” (1850), which is a liberal manifesto containing the much desired reforms to the conservative Chilean constitution of 1833. Above all, they demanded the protection of individual liberties and limits to the executive power but did not call for universal male suffrage. Instead, this liberal program endorsed literacy requirements for voting. When liberals came to power in 1861 they took the path of constitutional reform instead of drafting a new constitution. As has been noted, Chilean liberals privileged the way of reform, as opposed to revolution, to press for their own political ends (Jaksic and Serrano 2011, Jocelyn-Holt 1998).