A Full Account of the Great Fire at Pittsburgh: On the Tenth Day of April, 1845; With the Individual Losses, and Contributions for Relief (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from A Full Account of the Great Fire at Pittsburgh: On the Tenth Day of April, 1845; With the Individual Losses, and Contributions for Relief

The two Italian cities were long rivals in commercial prosperity, the star of the former seemed at length to be in the ascendant; when the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet at once cut ofl' all the sources of her wealth and power, and seemed to have established Venice in the exclusive possession of the intercourse with the Indies. Scarcely, however, was she well accustomed to all the profits of her wide spread commerce, when the discovery of a better route to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope, blasted at once all the fair prospects of Venice and gave Portugal and Lisbon a monopoly of the trade of the East.

The vicissitudes in the fortunes of these two cities furnish useful lessons to our Legislature. Let the representatives of the people only do justice to this, their western emporium, and a very brief period will witness the return of that vigorous health and prosperity which we enjoyed before the late calamitous fire. The incessant and long continued wars of Venice and Genoa checked not their advance in wealth and power; but events over which they had no control, deprived them of their commerce, and at once they sank before the culminating star of a successful rival. We, then, trust that no foolish fear or selfish influence will induce our own Legislature to drive from our State a valuable improvement which seeks a termination here, and thus inflict upon our prosperity a wound ten-fold more severe than our late visitation.

Were our book intended merely for home circulation, we would never have thought of this exposition of the influence of the fire upon our prosperity. Almost three months have elapsed since that disaster, and even now the fears of the most desponding among us are dissipated by the progress already made, in filling up the burnt district with substantial houses, in many cases much better than those consumed. Intelligence of the disaster was, however, spread far and wide; many thousands of persons who may never visit our city and witness its rapid renovation can never have occular demonstration of it, and may continue to believe that our city is forever prostrate. For such persons is this article mainly designed.

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