ing 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_.

I had scarcely opened my establishment at Madrid when I began to hear
rumours of certain transactions at Valencia, said to be encouraged by the
British and Foreign Bible Society. As these transactions, as they were
reported, were in the highest degree absurd and improper, and as I was
convinced that the Bible Society would sanction nothing of the kind, I
placed little or no credit in them, and put them down to the account of
Jesuitical malignity. In less than a fortnight appeared in the
newspapers what I conceived to be a gross and uncalled-for attack upon
the Bible Society, appended to a pastoral of the Bishop of Valencia, in
which he forbade the sale of the Bible throughout his diocese. The
Committee are acquainted with my answer to that epistle; they are well
aware with what zeal and fervour I spoke against the spirit of Popery,
and defended the Society and their cause as far as my feeble talents
would permit. Yet I here confess that the said answer was penned, if not
in perfect ignorance of what had been transacted in Valencia, at least in
almost utter disbelief; for had it been my fortune at the time to have
been as well informed as I have subsequently been, so far from publishing
the answer in question I would at once have publicly disclaimed, as I
afterwards did, any participation or sympathy in transactions which were
not only calculated to bring the Bible cause into odium, but the Bible
Society into difficulties, into discredit, and worst of all, into
contempt. A helpless widow was insulted, her liberty of conscience
invaded, and her only son incited to rebellion against her. A lunatic
was employed as the _repartidor_ or distributor of the blessed Bible, who
having his head crammed with what he understood not, ran through the
streets