To give the censor time to examine its contents, the Diario is printed the afternoon preceding its publication, and is issued every day except Monday, thus leaving the printers free from work and at liberty on Sunday.
The Diario has a large circulation in Manilla and the different provinces of the islands, besides having agents at Madrid, Cadiz, and Paris; it is also obtainable in the Havana, at Hongkong, and at Singapore.
The subscription is one dollar a month, which is moderate enough; and advertisements are inserted in its columns without charge.
Once a week it includes a list of the shipping in the harbour, and also of the arrivals and departures, and reports every morning the arrivals and cargoes of any vessels that have come in on the previous day from the provinces. It also publishes a weekly price-current of the produce of the country.
A well-conducted periodical of this nature is of great importance in a commercial point of view, not only from the advertisements circulated by its means throughout the Philippines, but from the variety of facts and information which the country alcaldes address to the Manilla Government, in which they are required to give a list of the prices-current for the various articles of produce grown in their different provinces; a regulation which, of course, tends to keep the trade on a sound footing, and to prevent reckless speculation, which the want of market information usually induces.
The Diario is delivered at the houses of Manilla subscribers at about daylight every morning, so that they may make themselves masters of its contents while sipping their chocolate, before engaging in the business of the day. This is no slight luxury, I assure the reader, and it is not at all diminished by the place being so remote from the sound of Bow-bells and the region of Cockaigne, although it is true that the contents of the paper are not composed of exciting parliamentary reports, or of leading articles equal in talent to those of the Times or Morning Chronicle.
The mail bags are carried to the provinces by mounted couriers, and the north post, arriving at Manilla every Friday morning, brings communications from the important provinces of Bulacan, Bataan, Zambales, Pampanga, Nueva Eciga, Pangasinan, Ilocos (North and South), Abra, and Cagayan; and is despatched from the capital to all these districts every Monday at noon.
The south post, embracing the provinces of Laguna, Batangas, Mindoro, the islands of Masbate and Ticao, Camarines (North and South), Albay, Samars, and Leyte, reaches Manilla every Tuesday morning, and is despatched from it in return every Wednesday at noon. To the arsenal of Cavite there is a daily post, excepting on Sundays; and to the islands of Visayas, the Marianas, and Batanes, the correspondence is forwarded by the first ships bound for any of those places, as they are obliged to give notice to the postmaster two days before starting for them.
It would be difficult to over-estimate the advantages of this line of postal communication, which affords the native traders in remote places the best facilities for the prosecution of their trade in the various articles of commerce produced in the districts where they live.
There are, of course, several things which might be improved in the administration of the post-office, as is the case in every country, without bringing Spain and her colonies in question; but, no doubt, these will be found out by-and-by, and an alteration for the better will take place.