Excerpt from An Introductory Lecture Delivered Before the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Pittsburgh, on the 20th December, 1836

Gentlemen: - There are principally three things which make a city prosperous, advantage of situation, commerce, and manufactures. Peculiar states of society may nourish a town into great splendor independent of these, but these are the permanent parents of prosperity, which never fail of success. Ancient Rome grew great by conquering the nations of the world, and carrying home the spoils of the conquered. Becoming the head of an immense empire which she governed by the terror of her eagles, she swelled at length into a gigantic stature, and maintained it for a few centuries, but her growth was not the natural effect of those laws which advance a particular place to eminence by its fostering others, and by being reciprocally beloved and fed by them. Hence, when the nations of Europe recovered the management of their own affairs, Rome became covered with the ruins of her own greatness, and though the human family was never so rich in arts and enterprises of every kind as now, yet she sits solitary and decrepit with age.

In a very early period of human society. Tyre was the most advantageously situated, and her inhabitants became princes. They had commerce and manufactures, and by means of these, though inhabiting a desert spot, they outstripped in genius and enterprise all other people. From them sprang the germ of all subsequent improvements.

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