Until the end of the year 1863, [14] when the memorable royal decree, which established a plan of primary education in Filipinas, arranged for the creation of schools of primary instruction in all the villages of the islands, and the creation of a normal school in Manila whence should graduate educated and religious teachers, who should take charge of those institutions, was dictated, it can be said that there had been no legislation in regard to primary instruction in these islands; for, although it is certain that orders directed for the purpose of obtaining the instruction of the natives, and very especially, the teaching of the beautiful Spanish language, are not lacking, some of those orders being contained in the Leyes de Indias and in the edicts of good government [Bandos de Buen Gobierno], it is a fact that those orders are isolated regulations, without connection, and the product of the good desire which has always animated the monarchs of España and their worthy representatives in the archipelago, for the advance and prosperity of the archipelago, but without resting on a fixed foundation, for lack of elements so that such foundation might exist. [15] Before the above-mentioned epoch the reverend and devout [16] parish priests came to fill in great part, and voluntarily, the noble ends of propagating primary instruction through these remote regions, with the aid of the most advanced of their scholars themselves, who devoted themselves to the teaching of their fellow citizens, receiving scarcely any remuneration for their work and trouble, and without being regarded as teachers or having any certificate which accredited them as such. The above-mentioned royal decree of December 20, 1863, and the regulations of the same date, established and unfolded a true plan for primary instruction, which has served as a basis for the innumerable number of orders relative to the said department, which have been dictated from day to day, both by the government of the mother country and by the former superior civil government, by the general government, and by the General Division of Civil Administration of these islands, in order to attain the degree of perfection which this most important department of public administration--the foundation of the culture and the welfare of the villages--obtains in Filipinas today. That same accumulation of orders, [17] which have produced the rapid advancement of public instruction in this archipelago, has been the motive for a certain apparent confusion, which, in reality, does not exist, for there is observed in those orders an admirable harmony, which is explained if one bear in mind that they have all been dictated for one and the same end, with one desire, and for the same purpose: namely, that of obtaining the greatest advancement of education in this far-distant Spanish province, and that of benefiting the noble class of teachers.