The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-31 00:00:00

Scarcely, had the inhabitants of Quebec begun to recover in some
degree from the horror, confusion, and dismay of the conflagration
on the 28th May last, which compelled them to make their farmer
appeal to your benevolence, when it pleased an overruling Provi-
dence to visit them with another similar and even greater calamity.
On the night of the 28th June, nearly the whole remaining part of
the suburb of St. John, which the former fire had spared, and a
large part of the suburb of St. Lewis, were reduced to ashes ; begin-
ning, as on the former occasion, at the extreme windward point of the
suburb, and fed by a gale of wind from the eastward, (to which quar-
ter the wind had changed in the evening of that day, after blowing
from the westward for nearly a fortnight), the fire spread
with irresistible fury through the length and breadth of both
suburbs. The buildings, almost entirely of wood, fell before its
rage with even greater rapidity than those on the 28th of May. In
eight hours, of more than 1,200 dwellings, two places of worship,
three school-houses, and numerous stores and outhouses, nothing
remained but blackened chimneys, roofless walls, and piles of ruins.
The burial-wound of the Protestant population has been traversed
by the fire, and its wooden and marble memorials of the dead to a
groat extent injured or destroyed; and in passing through this dis-
trict, which lately contained the homes of 9,000 inhabitants, neither
man, woman, or child is now to be met, except a few stragglers
from curiosity surveying the desolation. Several thousands of those
whose dwellings had been destroyed in the last conflagration had
here found shelter by the kindness and hospitality of their charitable
fellow-citizens ; and were thus again driven forth, involved' in one
common ruin with those who had harboured them. The morning
of Sunday, the 29th June, dawned upon more than 15,000 people
whom the flames had left without shelter or food, scattered, with the
effects they had been able to save, over the fields and open spaces
without the walls, or flying to the neighbouring settlements. As on
the former occasion, a third part of the city has fallen a prey to the
flames ; and Quebec on the landward side is reduced to limits net
much larger than it possessed when Wolfe fell before its walls. nut
the last calamity may be said to be far greater than the former, as
falling upon a large number of those who had suffered then, de-
priving them of their last shelter, consuming a larger amount of
property, either uninsured or for which the owners, being them-
selves holders of stock in the insurance companies, must bear their
own loss, and utterly destroying the resources of a large class of the
population who would have been still able to succour those who had
been cast upon their charity.
If, as stated in our former appeal, the contributions of those who
had then come forward to the relief of the sufferers had reached, or
perhaps even exceeded the limit of their means, our fellow-country-
men will feel that our present further appeal to their charity is not
without too just a cause. Still are we using every exertion within
our ability to alleviate the public misfortune ; many have lied for
ever from a city which appears to them to be under a doom, or have
found present shelter in other parts of the province ; but ii,e Julia-
' bitants who have received them are themselves too poor to keep
them long, and they will probably return to the city before the
winter.

Looking forward with alarm to the state in which we shall be
when the winter comes upon us, with two-thirds of the city in ruins,
and nearly two-thirds of its population, of the productive and indus-
trious classes, reduced almost to the level of pauperism, but yet
anxious to keep and maintain them among us, and to recal those who
have gone away—we again appeal for aid to our fellow-subjects. With-
out their further aid, Quebec, the resort of an amount of British ship-
ping larger than in any transatlantic port, and an extensive mart of
British commerce, must long remain what it now is, an almost ruined
and depopulated city. With that aid, and with the assistance ex-
pected from the Imperial Parliament, and that promised by the pro-
viacial government for present relief and towards rebuilding the
city with materials less liable to destruction by fire—and with our
own vigorous exertions, we yet hope, under the blessing of Prbvi-
dence, that it may in the lapse of no long time regain something of
its former prosperity, and even find its present unexampled calami-
ties issuing in its lasting advantage.
G. J. MONTREAL,
1;.1 P. F. EVEQUE DE SIDYME,
Coacljuteur de Quebec,
J. NEILSON,
•W. WALKER,
A. W. COCHRAN,
J. C. FISHER,

Committee of Correspondence,

Quebec, July 7, 1845.