The question of whether the parish priests or missionaries have opposed those rules is of little importance to us. As in all disputable cases there are partisans who favor and those who oppose--not the advantage which the generalization of the Spanish language might be, for all people recognize and admit this hypothesis, but only the results which the generalization of the Spanish language would produce, reckoning on the slight capacity of the natives to utilize the good that they might read in the idiom of Cervantes, and bearing in mind the political make-up of that country and the evil effects which would be produced by the daily publications which would arrive [from España], and which are incapable of enlightening the little but submissive intelligence of those inhabitants, yet always sufficient to excite the passions of men who would easily confuse rights with individual duties, giving a worse result than that which the history of our ancient colonies registers. As we do not know of this department in the present circumstances more than that which the above-cited work brings to light, we shall limit ourselves to calling the attention of the government so that it may introduce in that department all the improvements possible, extending the normal school, which gives very slight results for a people of five millions, and proving whether this normal school, organized with a mixture of the language of the country and of the Spanish and by creating one school in each group of provinces belonging to the same language, would give a more positive result in regard to instruction, and one even more efficacious for the propagation of the Spanish by printing works in two columns in the two languages. [152] What the archipelago lacks are men and women teachers to give instruction in the primary schools. Industrial teachers, professorships for foremen and assistants for public works and master masons would produce a great result in that country. Lastly, let all the generals bear in mind what the various ancient decrees rule to the effect that a charge shall be made to them in their residencias for their neglect in public instruction. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION Public instruction is sufficiently far advanced in Filipinas, especially in what refers to primary instruction. It is strange to see that in the most remote villages, the majority of the Indians know how to read and even to write, having learned without teachers, and solely through the strength of their inclination and extraordinary patience. The public schools are better organized today, and have in charge of them teachers who have graduated from the normal school of Manila. It cannot fail to be worthy of striking the attention that almost all the boys and girls who attend the schools read Spanish without understanding it, and write our language by drawing the letters materially.