Article 32 determines the powers of the parish priest as local supervisor, which, although they were conceded with a certain timidity, were perhaps believed to be excessive or unnecessary, and it seems its abolition was clearly agreed upon by art. 12 in declaring the municipal captain "supervisor of the schools." This blow must be judged as a very strong one in the lofty governmental spheres of the islands, for the genuine representation of the parish priests in the villages is one of the functions most natural to their charge, both as teachers of the Catholic doctrine and ethics, and in the role of traditional supporters of the schools, although in art. 102 was established the following as an explanation to art. 12 of the decree: "Without prejudice to the supervision which belongs in the instruction to the parish priests according to the regulations of December 1863, whose powers are not at all altered, the tribunal shall watch carefully over primary instruction; shall demand the teaching of Castilian in the schools; shall oblige the inhabitants to send their children to them; and shall stimulate instruction by means of adequate examinations and rewards. Said tribunal shall place in operation the most practical means for the diffusion of the Spanish language among the inhabitants, deciding upon those means in meetings with the parish priests and the delegates of the principalía." At first view one observes the good desire which the author of said article shelters when he says that the powers conceded to the parish priest as supervisor of schools by art. 20 of the regulations of the same shall not be changed in any point, without perceiving that directly afterward it created another authority in opposition to that of the parish priest, if not with all the powers of the latter, because those which he possesses as teacher in ethics and the doctrine do not admit of transmission, yet clearly of all the others, and in them with prior rank.