Assembly Bill 148 provided for the teaching of the local native dialects in the public schools. This would have had the effect of doing away with the teaching of English, or preventing its inauguration, in many places; would have emphasized and perpetuated the different native dialects; would have helped to keep the people speaking these several dialects apart, and would thus seriously have hampered progress toward national unity. One of the most important and useful things that the American government is doing is to generalize the knowledge of the English language, which not only gives the several peoples of the archipelago a common means of communication, but opens up new fields of knowledge to them and makes it easy for them to travel. Even during the days of the Filipino "republic" Mabini advocated making English the official language. [153] Assembly Bill 197 abolished the Bureau of Civil Service and organized in its stead a division attached to the Bureau of Audits. This bill, ostensibly an economy measure, was designed to minimize the usefulness of one of the most important bureaus of the government. In the early days of the American régime Filipinos who had served the government were often deeply offended that appointments were not given to members of their families or to their near relatives, absolutely irrespective of their fitness for office. Naturally they disapproved of the civil service law when they found that it prevented such appointments. Second Session Assembly Bill 201 prohibited the employment of foreigners as engineers or as assistant engineers on vessels in the Philippine Islands. There were at this time an extremely limited number of Filipinos capable of filling such positions, which were largely held by Spaniards and other Europeans who had married native women and had lived in the islands for years. This measure would have crippled shipping companies and would have been a grave injustice to the men above referred to. Assembly Bill 278, which heavily reduced taxes on distilled spirits and cigarettes, was another attempt to make concessions to certain large tobacco and liquor interests, which could perfectly well afford to pay at the rates then prescribed. It would have decreased the annual insular revenues about $1,000,000 at a time when it was anticipated that free trade with the United States, resulting from the passage of the Payne Bill, would greatly reduce customs duties. Such a loss would seriously have crippled the administration of the islands.