In 1572, the Suprema made an effort to check the multiplication of these officials by decreeing that they should be appointed only in the chief towns of archpriestly districts, but it promptly receded from this and, the next year, authorized them wherever it seemed necessary, which amounted to unlimited permission. An order, in 1576, that they were not to be defended in prosecutions for concubinage is suggestive as to the prevailing morality and, in 1584, they were instructed to keep in constant correspondence with the tribunals, reporting everything that occurred in their districts, which indicates how comprehensive a system of espionage was established.[791] [Sidenote: _COMMISSIONERS_] The Suprema, in a carta acordada of March 24, 1604, made a serious attempt to check existing evils. It called attention to the abuses in appointing commissioners, notaries and familiars, whose multitude and general unworthiness resulted in greatly impairing the authority of the Inquisition. In future, commissioners were to be appointed only in the chief towns of the _partidos_, or local judicial districts, or at least four leagues apart. Inquisitors should bear in mind that their duties embrace cases of the utmost importance, requiring men of intelligence, virtue and silence; they should have benefices or revenues sufficient to live with the dignity befitting their high office.[792] The prescription as to number and location received scant obedience. We chance to meet with them in obscure places like Cobeña and Fuentelsas, and a list of them in the little province of Guipúzcoa, which has but four partidos, amounts to seventeen. An experienced writer, in 1648, after reciting the limitations, states that there are places where there are three or four, disguised by appointments nominally to neighboring hamlets.[793]