12 HISTORICAL SKETCH, &c.

1819, one of those relapses ensued, which palsies the ener-
gies of whole communities. We suffered from it with an in-
tensity that has taught us a lesson which at least should make
us wise by the force of the most melancholy experience. In
1825 we sustained another revulsion, and the derangement
of the monetary operations of 1833, was also to us a sore
affliction; but owing to a healthful pre-existing condition of
our people, arising, perhaps, from the wisdom they had
learned in 1819, the failure of the Bank of Maryland, the
suspension of several Savings Institutions, and of two Insu-
rance Companies, intimately connected with the moneyed
concerns of the city, Baltimore has stood it all like a strong
man, and is at this da}' enjoying a business, which vouchsafes
to her citizens ample reward for all their toil, industry and
capital.

Since the period of the French revolution, many valuable
institutions have grown up among us. Churches dedicated
to the service of the Most High, a new and splendid Court
House, private charities, Jail, Penitentiary, Exchange, Ma-
sonic and Odd Fellows Halls, Banks, Insurance Companies,
Turnpikes, Rail Roads, and in fine nearly ail that the wants
of our people required have been provided—and now, with
pur Rail Roads and Canals in progress and completed, seek-
ing the West and the East and the South, through valley and
over mountain, in every direction; with our noble bay and its
countless tributary streams, affording on their bosoms the
mediums of conveyance, we are overcoming space and in-
viting trade from every point of our immeasurable country,
and Baltimore may, in truth be said, to he on the great high-
way which must ensure ber a proud eminence among the
family of American cities. But if it would not be a mips, we
might here observe, that if we desire to make our market as
acceptable to our Western, Southern and South Western
Merchants, as its local position entitles it to be, more capital
must be invested in foreign commerce. Packets to England
and France should he established, and this alone will attract
capital from other places to our doors, to be invested in that
peculiar branch of trade; the increased facilities of transpor-
tation will assuredly divert to our port a portion of that foreign
capital, and those foreign agencies, which have built up New
York, and placed it a century in advance of her sisters. —
Whilever we draw many of our supplies from second-hand
sources, it will continue to operate to our prejudice, and ren-
der us secondary, when our situation would indicate our
enjoy ment of a relation far more acceptable to our patriotism
and our pride.