The provincial supervision entrusted to the alcaldes by article 15 of the organic royal decree, shall be exercised with the aid of a commission composed of the diocesan prelate, or in his absence, by the parish priest of the chief city, and the administrator of the public finances. Where the chief of the province is not the alcalde-mayor, he shall also form a part of the commission, but in the generality of cases, as is well known, he presides over it. Although the above-cited article 15 refers to regulations for schools and teachers for the organization of the provincial center, article 31 of this last order has been limited to a repetition of that precept, almost in the same terms, leaving the dictation of measures which regulate their supervisory action to the judgment of this government. This would be a most important task if the organization of the provincial governments in the archipelago corresponded to the necessities of public administration in all its branches. It would be, I repeat, a most important task, if this superior government could lay aside the difficulties which it would create for itself for the future, by dictating principles of which it is the first to doubt the application, and even recognizing, as it does, the most exquisite care in all the chiefs of the province. To this consideration of a practical nature answers perhaps the indicated vacuity of the regulations for schools. On the other side, the organization initiated December 20, 1863, by its character of ad interim in so far as it refers to the directive centers of the provinces, seems now to feel the need of reform which afflicts those centers, when among other things it names repeatedly the provincial chiefs.