Though he owed his elevation to his military successes the new president did not attempt to rule as a dictator, and co-operated cordially with the vice-president in organising a parliamentary civil government on an enduring basis. Prieto played not illy the role of a Washington to Portales' Hamilton. Militarism, radicalism, and federalism had been tried and found wanting and the great conservative statesman took care that the new order should be tainted with none of them. Two years were spent in careful experiment and deliberation, and the Constitution framed in 1833 has remained, with a few amendments, the fundamental law of Chile to this day. The most aristocratic and centralised of American Constitutions, it has given Chile the strongest and stablest government in Spanish America. The foundation of political power is the property-holding class. No man may vote unless he possesses land, invested capital, or an equivalent income from his trade or profession, and congress may fix the amount of the qualification as high as it pleases. Political power originated in the oligarchy, and its exercise was delegated to a president whose functions are even more extensive than those of the chief magistrate of the United States. _Ipso facto_ commander-in-chief of the armed forces, free to select his cabinet and the chief functionaries of state without the confirmation of a senate, not subject to impeachment, possessing an effective control over the judiciary, given a practically absolute veto, with the intendentes of the provinces and the governors of the departments receiving from him their commissions and acting as his agents, it would seem that the president of Chile is little less than an absolute and irresponsible ruler. But from the beginning the executive was in practice dependent upon the oligarchy as represented in congress. The instances in which a president has tried to rule in defiance of the wishes of the aristocracy have been rare, and never successful. When Prieto's first term expired in 1836, many of the conservatives pressed Portales to accept the presidency, but he was satisfied with his place as chief minister. Under his vigorous and intelligent direction the courts and clergy had been reformed, the police organised, a national guard created, the budgets balanced, the executive and congress worked harmoniously together, peace and order had replaced confusion. Chile's feet had been placed on the path of social and industrial progress.