decree and municipal regulations--it would result, we say--at each step in an encounter and rivalry in which the parish priests would come out second best, for the simple reason, repeated to satiety in innumerable articles of the decree and municipal regulations, that the action of the parish priest is nothing more than supervision and counsel, [87] with the added abasement that "his presence shall not be included in the number of those who shall concur in the validity of the deliberations," as is prescribed by art. 49 of the decree and 64 of the regulations. Sad then, is, and at once, graceless, the function of the parish priest compared to the action of the captain and of the board which is executive. It seems unnecessary to say that the action and powers of the parish priest in his duties as local supervisor of schools result in the theoretical legal sphere of action, completely null and void, and that action carried to the practical field of action exposes it to continual rivalries, numerous frictions, and even deep quarrels between two authorities, who in that, as in everything which belongs to the multiple affairs of the village, ought to be in perfect accord, as is demanded jointly by the lofty interests of religion and of the fatherland, of the spiritual welfare and of the material order and peace of the villages. And as that duality, besides being shameful and lowering for the parish priests, is inviolable, and since by another part art. 12 of the decree and 102 of the regulations, both above cited, in the form in which they have been compiled, do not fill any need or space, as all that which is ordained therein is a repetition of what has been already decreed, there is no reason for their existence, to the evident common harm, and to the small shame of the parish priest, who deserves eternal gratitude for his labors, for his solicitude, and for the zeal which he has ever displayed, and in the midst of the greatest sacrifices, for the instruction.