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 ERA OF CONSTITUTION MAKING 269 ed to $2,035,412, and this represents about the sum Chile now began to spend annually upon schools. In the same year there were two hundred and ninety-eight university degrees conferred; there were 1,359 primary schools, eight hundred and eighteen public and five hundred and forty-one private, with an average atten- dance of 65,875 pupils. In 1877, Pinto's active minis- ter of public instruction, Amunategui, addressed a cir- cular letter to the professors of the Normal schools recommending the establishment of evening schools for adults; also, that such classes be established in the provincial lyceums. This was a very popular measure and received hearty support. Within the year there were established forty-seven night schools, supported by the government, with an average attendance of four thousand adults, eager to learn the primary branches. The disputes in respect to church questions contin- ued through President Pinto's administration with una- bated zeal and acrimony. In 1877, a conflict arose over the appointment of a successor to the archbishop of Santiago, Don Rafael Valentine Valdivieso, who died June gth, 1878. A majority of the clergy, the ultramontane sect-ion, opposed Don Francisco de Paulo Taforo as successor in the See, he being the govern- ment's choice. The government was determined that church dignitaries should thereafter be named by the civil authorities, if the state continued to pay the ec- clesiastical officials of Santiago. Hence the conflict. The government supported Seiior Taforo; the ultra- montane clergy did not. The matter was agitated for several years ; an apostolic delegate, Senor Celestino del Frate, Bishop of Himeria, was sent out from Rome to report upon the trouble and was expelled hy Santa Maria. Feeling ran high, but in the end reformatory measures were carried and the government won the