been in America, I wondered what they could be going to London for; but, upon my return, I was told by a _Captain Lane_, who had been in the regiment, that they had been brought up to swear that at an entertainment given to them by me before my departure from the regiment, I had drunk ‘_the destruction of the House of Brunswick_.’ This was false; but I knew that that was no reason why it should not be _sworn_ by such persons, and in such a case. I had talked pretty freely upon the occasion alluded to; but I had neither said nor thought against the King; and, as to the _House of Brunswick_, I hardly knew what it meant. My head was filled with the corruptions and the baseness in the army. I knew nothing at all about politics. Nor would any threat of this sort have induced me to get out of the way for a moment, though it certainly would if I had known my danger, for glorious ‘Jacobinical’ times were just then beginning. Of this, however, I knew nothing at all. I did not know what the _Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act_ meant. When you have a mind to do a thing, every trifle is an additional motive. Lane, who had enlisted me, and who had always shown great kindness toward me, told me they would send me to Botany Bay; and I now verily believe, that if I had remained, I should have furnished a pretty good example to those who wished to correct military abuses. I did not, however, leave England from this motive. I could not obtain a chance of success, without exposing the back of my poor faithful friend Bestland, which had I not pledged myself not to do, I would not have done. It was useless to appear, unless I could have tolerable fair play; and, besides, it seemed better to leave the whole set to do as they pleased, than to be made a mortified witness of what it was quite evident they had resolved to do. “Such is the _true_ history of this affair, which had the public-robbers given it as it stood, unmutilated, not a word should I ever have published, by way of defence or explanation.”