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Profoundly disappointed by his experiences in America, Richard Parkinson’s Tour in America 1798, 1799, 1800, originally published in London in 1805, was expressly published to prevent emigration to America, seeking to save those who seek to make their fortunes in America from their
delusions.
He notes that:
It will afford me infinite pleasure if the publication of the following sheets, giving an account of my disappointments in America, should have the desired effect–that of preventing my countrymen from running headlong into misery, as myself and many others have done.
A
practical farmer,
Parkinson left England in 1798 after arranging to
let
a parcel of land surrounding Mount Vernon from George Washington himself. Coming to America to
Speculate to make a rapid fortune,
Parkinson found himself rapidly disappointed:
but farming being my sole object in life, I found the climate and soil there to be of such a nature as to put it out of the power of man to enrich the land without such an enormous expence as (if he had no other means than what the produce of the land would afford) must ruin any one.
Even more shocking, are the
notions of equality
and he complains mightily of the
disrespectful manners of white servants toward masters,
finding it shocking that
The idea of liberty and equality there destroys all the rights of the master, and every man does as he likes.
In decrying his experience in America, Parkinson highlighted the very qualities that made America and Americans of the late-eighteenth century what they were, thereby showcasing the cultural and material divide between England and her former colony.
