Account of Proceedings in the Peninsula
Gentlemen of the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society—
I beg leave to call your attention to the following statements. They relate to my proceedings during the period which embraces my second sojourn in Spain—to my labours in a literary point of view—to my travels in a very remarkable country, the motive in which they originated and the result to which they led—to my success in the distribution of the Scripture, and to the opposition and encouragement which I have experienced. As my chief objects are brevity and distinctness I shall at once enter upon my subject, abstaining from reflections of every kind, which in most cases only tend to embarrass, being anxious to communicate facts alone, with most of which, it is true, you are already tolerably well acquainted, but upon all and every of which I am eager to be carefully and categorically questioned. It is neither my wish nor my interest to conceal one particular of what I have been doing. And with these few prefatory observations I commence.
In the first place, my literary labours. Having on my former visit to Spain obtained from the then Prime Minister Isturitz and his Cabinet permission and encouragement for the undertaking, I published on my return an edition of the New Testament at Madrid, a copy of which I now present to you for the first time. This work, executed at the office of Borrego, the most fashionable printer at Madrid, who had been recommended to me by Isturitz himself and most particularly by my excellent friend Mr. O’Shea, is a publication which I conceive no member of the Committee will consider as calculated to cast discredit on the Bible Society, it being printed on excellent English paper and well bound, but principally and above all from the fact of its exhibiting scarcely one typographical error, every proof having been read thrice by myself and once or more times by the first scholar in Spain.
I subsequently published the Gospel of Saint Luke in the Rommany and Biscayan languages. With respect to the first, I beg leave to observe that no work printed in Spain ever caused so great and so general a sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people, for whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who, though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos as they are popularly called, probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the lascivious dances of the females. The apparition therefore of the Gospel of Saint Luke at Madrid in the peculiar jargon of these people was hailed as a strange novelty and almost as a wonder, and I believe was particularly instrumental in bruiting the name of the Bible Society far and wide through Spain, and in creating a feeling far from inimical towards it and its proceedings. I will here take the liberty to relate an anecdote illustrative of the estimation in which this little work was held at Madrid. The Committee are already aware that a seizure was made of many copies of Saint Luke in the Rommany and Biscayan languages, in the establishment at which they were exposed for sale, which copies were deposited in the office of the Civil Governor. Shortly before my departure a royal edict was published, authorising all the public libraries to provide themselves with copies of the said works on account of their philological merit; whereupon, on application being made to the office, it was discovered that the copies of the Gospel in Basque were safe and forthcoming, whilst every one of the sequestered copies of the Gitano Gospel had been plundered by hands unknown. The consequence was that I was myself applied to by then agents of the public libraries of Valencia and other places, who paid me the price of the copies which they received, assuring me at the same time that they were authorised to purchase them at whatever price which might be demanded.
Respecting the Gospel in Basque I have less to say. It was originally translated into the dialect of Guipuscoa by Dr. Oteiza, and subsequently received corrections and alterations from myself. It can scarcely be said to have been published, it having been prohibited and copies of it seized on the second day of its appearance. But it is in my power to state that it is anxiously expected in the Basque provinces, where books in the aboriginal tongue are both scarce and dear, and that several applications have been made at San Sebastian and in other towns where Basque is the predominating language.
I now proceed to the subject of my travels in Spain. Before undertaking them I was little acquainted with the genius of the Spanish people in general, having resided almost entirely in Madrid, and I was fully convinced that it was not from the inhabitants of one city that an accurate judgment could be formed of a population of nine millions, thinly scattered over a vast country so divided and intersected by mountain barriers as is the Peninsula. With this population under all its various circumstances and under all its various phases, the result of descent from a variety of foreign nations, I was anxious to make myself acquainted; for I reflected that he who builds a city on ground which he has not fully examined will perhaps discover when too late that his foundation is in a swamp, and that the whole of his labour is momentarily in danger of being swallowed up. I therefore went forth not so much for the purpose of distributing the Scriptures as to make myself acquainted with the prefatory steps requisite to be taken in order to secure my grand object. Before departing from Madrid I consulted with the many friends, some of them highly distinguished, which I had the honour to possess in that capital. Their unanimous advice, whether Catholics or Protestants, was that for the present I should proceed with the utmost caution, but without concealing the object of my mission which I considered to be the simple propagation of the Scripture—that I should avoid with diligence the giving offence to the prejudices of the people, especially in the rural districts, and endeavour everywhere to keep on good terms with the clergy, at least one-third of whom are known to be anxious for the dissemination of the Word of God though at the same time unwilling to separate themselves from the discipline and ceremonials of Rome. I bore this advice in mind, which indeed perfectly tallied with my own ideas, and throughout the two thousand miles of my peregrination during the summer of last year, I performed much if not all of what I proposed, and am not aware that in one single instance my proceedings were such as could possibly merit reproof. I established depôts in all the principal towns of the north of Spain, and in all gave notice to the public of the arrival of the New Testament in a mild yet expressive advertisement which I here exhibit, and which I beg leave to state is the only advertisement which I ever made use of. The consequence was that the work enjoyed a reasonable sale, and I experienced no opposition—except in the case of Leon, a town remarkable for its ultra-Carlism—but on the contrary much encouragement especially on the part of the ecclesiastics. I visited Salamanca and Valladolid the chief seats of Castilian learning, I visited Saint James of Compostella, the temple of the great image of the Patron of Spain, and in none of these cities was a single voice raised against the Bible Society or its Agent. But I did not confine myself to the towns, but visited the small and large villages, and by this means became acquainted with both citizens and rustics; amongst the former I found little desire for sober serious reading, but on the contrary a rage for stimulant narratives, and amongst too many a lust for the deistical writings of the French, especially for those of Talleyrand, which have been translated into Spanish and published by the press of Barcelona, and for which I was frequently pestered. I several times enquired of the book-sellers of the various towns which I visited as to the means to be used towards introducing the Scripture amongst the villagers; but to this question they invariably replied that, unless the villagers came to the towns and purchased the work, they saw no means of making it known amongst them, unless I made friends in the villages in whose hands I could deposit copies for sale, though in such a case the difficulty of recovering the money would be immense. I therefore at last resolved to make an experiment, the result of which fully corresponded with an opinion which I had for some time formed—namely, that in the villages, sequestered and apart amongst the mountains and in the sandy plains of Spain, I might at any time be sure of a glorious harvest, far more rich than that which it was possible for me to expect in towns and cities, unless I had recourse to means unwarranted, nay forbidden, by the Book which I distributed, and which means had been proscribed by the Society itself on my departure for Spain. But now to proceed at once to the experiment, which I made at different periods and in different provinces.
I twice sallied forth one morning alone and on horseback, and proceeded to a distant village, bearing behind me a satchel of books. On my arrival, which took place just after the siesta or afternoon’s sleep had concluded, I proceeded in both instances to the market-place, where I spread a horse-cloth on the ground, on which I deposited my books. I then commenced crying with a loud voice: ‘Peasants, peasants, I bring you the Word of God at a cheap price. I know you have but little money, but I bring it to you at whatever you can command, at four or three reals according to your means.’ I thus went on till a crowd gathered round me, who examined the book with attention, many of them reading it aloud. But I had not long to tarry; in both instances I disposed of my cargo almost instantaneously, and then mounted my horse without a question having been asked me, and returned to my temporary residence lighter than I left it. This occurred in Castile and Galicia, near the towns of Santiago and Valladolid.
The above are incidents which I have hitherto kept within the privacy of my own bosom and which I have confided to none; they were but experiments, which at that time I had no wish to repeat, nor to be requested so to do. I was perfectly aware that such a line of conduct, if followed before the proper time, would give offence to the clergy, not only to the Carlist but the liberal clergy, and likewise to the Government; and it formed no part of my plan to be on ill terms with either. For I remembered that I was a stranger and a labourer on sufferance in Christ’s cause in a half-barbaric land, on which the light of freedom and true religion was just beginning to dawn, and I was unwilling by over-precipitance and for the sake of a mere temporary triumph to forego the solid and lasting advantages which I foresaw, and had been told that patience and prudence would assure. I resolved to use the knowledge which I had obtained by these experiments only as a last resource, provided any accident which it was impossible for me then to foresee should overturn all the plans which my friends and myself had been forming for the quiet and peaceful introduction of the Scriptures amongst the Spaniards with the consent or at least with the connivance of the Government and clergy, knowing well that a great part of the latter were by no means disposed to offer any serious opposition to such a measure, they having sense and talent enough to perceive that the old system can no longer be upheld of which the essential part is, as is well known, to keep the people in ignorance of the great sterling truths of Christianity. I now come to the most distressing part of my narrative and likewise to the most miserable of my own life.
I returned to Madrid from my long, fatiguing and most perilous journey, in which I must be permitted to say that independent of a thousand miraculous escapes from the factious and the banditti I had been twice arrested as a spy, namely, once at Vigo and subsequently at Cape Finisterre, in which latter instance I narrowly escaped with life, the ignorant fishermen having determined upon shooting me and my guide. Upon finding the booksellers of Madrid, with the exception of Razola, a man of no importance, averse to undertake the sale of the New Testament I determined upon establishing a shop of my own, a step to which I was advised by many sincere friends of the Cause and of myself. Having accomplished this, I advertised the work incessantly, not only in the public prints but by placards posted in all the streets of the city; but I wish it to be distinctly understood that the advertisement which I used was the same quiet innocent advertisement, a copy of which you possess, and of which I have availed myself in the provinces, an advertisement which had never given offence nor was calculated to give offence if squandered about the streets by millions. I make this statement in self-justification, I having, in consequence of a letter in which I made some observations respecting advertisements and handbills, received a paragraph in a communication from home, in which I was checked with having made a plentiful use of advertisements and handbills myself. It would have been as well if my respected and revered friend the writer had made himself acquainted with the character of my advertisements before he made that observation. There is no harm in an advertisement, if truth, decency and the fear of God are observed; and I believe my own will be scarcely found deficient in any of these three requisites. It is not the use of a serviceable instrument, but its abuse that merits reproof, and I cannot conceive that advertising was abused by me when I informed the people of Madrid, that the New Testament was to be purchased at a cheap price in the Calle del Principe.