Note 4 — Chapter XXIII · “WHATEVER OTHER FAULTS I MAY HAVE, THAT OF LETTING GO MY HOLD IS NOT ONE.”

There was a good deal of controversy concerning land-jobbing in America about this time. Mr. Morris Birkbeck, a prosperous farmer at Wanborough, in Surrey, left England with some highly coloured notions in his mind concerning the western territories of the United States, and produced two separate accounts, with the object of inducing British emigrants to follow him (“Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois,” and “Letters from Illinois”). Cobbett gave him a letter or two, under the impression that Birkbeck’s expectations were too fascinating. Mr. Birkbeck was unfortunately soon afterwards drowned in crossing a river. Mr. Henry Bradshaw Fearon, surgeon, went out under the auspices of some emigration committee. His was a somewhat “evil report,” and amongst other matters recorded a visit to Cobbett’s house in Long Island, which, he said, was mouldering to decay, that the fences were in ruins, and that the scene produced thoughts of melancholy (“Sketches of America: a Narrative of a Journey of 5000 Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America; with Remarks on Mr. Birkbeck’s ‘Notes’ and ‘Letters’”). The same candid pen which had endeavoured to check Birkbeck’s too great enthusiasm now had the duty to perform of chastising the author of these misrepresentations, and of Fearon’s general bad account of the Americans. Mr. Benjamin Flower also travelled westward, and sent home “Letters from the Illinois” (London, 1822). See, besides these, Faux’s “Memorable days in America” (London 1823).