should I have enemies in England? Why are those enemies all the friends of Mr Hume? Who could have excited their enmity against me? It certainly was not I, who knew nothing of them, nor ever saw them in my life. I should not have had a single enemy had I come to England alone.[7] I have hitherto dwelt upon public and notorious facts, which, from their own nature, and my acknowledgment, have made the greatest eclat. Those which are to follow are particular and secret, at least in their cause; and all possible measures have been taken to keep the knowledge of them from the public; but as they are well known to the person interested, they will not have the less influence toward his own conviction. A very short time after our arrival in London, I observed an absurd change in the minds of the people regarding me, which soon became very apparent. Before I arrived in England, there was not a nation in Europe in which I had a greater reputation, I will venture to say, or was held in greater estimation. The public papers were full of encomiums on me, and a general outcry prevailed on my persecutors.[8] This was the case at my arrival, which was published in the newspapers with triumph; England prided itself in affording me refuge, and justly gloried on that occasion in its laws and government; when all of a sudden, without the least assignable cause, the tone was changed, and that so speedily and totally, that, of all the caprices of the public, never was known any thing more surprising. The signal was given in a certain _Magazine_, equally full of follies and falsehoods, in which the author, being well informed, or pretending to be so, gives me out for the son of a musician. From this time[9] I was constantly spoken of in print in a very equivocal or slighting manner.[10] Every thing that had been published concerning my misfortunes was misrepresented, altered, or placed in a wrong light, and always as much as possible to my disadvantage. So far was any body from speaking of the reception I met with at Paris, and which had made but too much noise, it was not generally supposed that I durst have appeared in that city, even one of Mr Hume's friends being very much surprised when I told him I came through it.