To the Rev.A.Brandram (ENDORSED:recd.Jany.8,1838)MADRID,CALLE SANTIAGO No.16,DEC.25,1837.
REVD.AND DEAR SIR,-I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 5th instant,and also my friend Mr.Jackson's of the 8th.I should have replied ere this,had not my time been entirely occupied since my return from Toledo.The versions of St.Luke in Gitano and Basque have been committed to the press;and as the compositors are entirely ignorant of these languages a most strict surveillance is required,which I hope will be admitted as an excuse for having so long delayed to answer.I expect that within a fortnight my task will be completed.
You are aware that I have established in Madrid a shop,or DESPACHO,as it is here called,for the sale of Testaments,and you are doubtless anxious to receive information as to its success.It succeeds well,nay,I may say very well,when all circumstances are taken into consideration;for it ought to be known that I have ventured upon this step in the very place which of all in Spain,affords the least chance of a successful issue,yet at the same time in the place where such a step was most needed,provided it be the imperative duty of Christians to make the Word of their Master known in the dark portions of the earth.It was a step fraught with difficulties of every kind.Madrid,it is true,is the capital of Spain;yet let no one for a moment suppose that being so it is consequently the largest,richest and most enlightened town in the Peninsula.In the first place,it is inferior in population to Valencia and Barcelona;in the second,misery and distress reign here to an extent unknown elsewhere;and so far from its being peculiarly enlightened,I believe that of all places in the Peninsula it is the least so.It is the centre of old,gloomy,bigoted Spain,and if there be one inveterate disgusting prejudice more prevalent and more cherished in one spot than another,it is here,in this heart of old,popish,anti-christian Spain,always difficult of access,but now peculiarly so,as it is scarcely possible to travel a league from its gates without being stript naked and murdered.Yet in this singular capital,in the midst of furious priests and Carlists,I have ventured upon establishing a shop which bears on its front in large letters:'Despatch of the British and Foreign Bible Society.'To call the attention of the people to this establishment,I printed three thousand advertisements on paper,yellow,blue,and crimson,with which Ialmost covered the sides of the streets,and besides this inserted notices in all the journals and periodicals,employing also a man after the London fashion to parade the streets with a placard,to the astonishment of the populace.
