are some of the reasons why I think
this is the proper juncture for me to give some account of myself, and
of my past conduct to the world; and that I may do this as effectually
as I can, being perhaps never more to speak from the press, I shall, as
concisely as I can, give an abridgment of my own history during the few
unhappy years I have employed myself, or been employed, in public in the
world.

Misfortunes in business having unhinged me from matters of trade, it was
about the year 1694 when I was invited by some merchants, with whom I
had corresponded abroad, and some also at home, to settle at Cadiz, in
Spain, and that with offers of very good commissions. But Providence,
which had other work for me to do, placed a secret aversion in my mind
to quitting England upon any account, and made me refuse the best offers
of that kind, to be concerned with some eminent persons at home in
proposing ways and means to the government, for raising money to supply
the occasions of the war then newly begun. Some time after this I was,
without the least application of mine, and being then seventy miles from
London, sent for to be accountant to the commissioners of the glass
duty, in which service I continued to the determination of their
commission.

During this time there came out a vile abhorred pamphlet in very ill
verse, written by one Mr. Tutchin, and called The Foreigners, in which
the author--who he was I then knew not--fell personally upon the king
himself, and then upon the Dutch nation; and after having reproached his
majesty with crimes that his worst enemy could not think of without
horror, he sums up all in the odious name of FOREIGNER.

This filled me with a kind of rage against the book, and gave birth to a
trifle, which I never could hope should have met with so general an
acceptation as it did; I mean The True-born Englishman. How this poem
was the occasion of my being known to his majesty; how I was afterwards
received by him; how employed; and how, above my capacity of deserving,
rewarded, is no part of the present case, and is only mentioned here, as
I take all occasions to do, for the expressing the honour I ever
preserved for the immortal and glorious memory of that greatest and best
of princes, and whom it was my honour and advantage to call master, as
well as sovereign; whose goodness to me I never forgot, neither can
forget; and whose memory I never patiently heard abused, nor ever can do
so; and who,