GREAT LOSSES OF LIFE.

Inangahua Times, Volume IV, Issue 19, 23 May 1877, Page 2

GREAT LOSSES OF LIFE.

(From the New York Tribune.) Brooklyn'^ calamity brings into terrible relief the suddenness with which human life may be swept away when danger is least expected. In a very recent speech on international arbitration, Mr John Bright drew a short contrast between the sympathetic feeling by near-at-bome calamities, such as that, for instance, of the loss of 400 by the shipwreck of the Boyal Charter, and the comparative callousness of public sentiment when thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of lives were sacrificed in war. UnqoMfcioaftbly, it is the nearness of a calamity that chiefly makes it impressive ; especially when it is brought home to all of us by the circumstance that some persons whom we knew or had heard of were among the victims, or by the reflection that we wha are yet living are liable to a similar fate. Great as was the los 3ot life in the Brooklyn Theatre, it cannot take rank ia tbat respect with some of the terrible disasters tbathistory has recorded. Probably the most awful destruction of life from fire in England took place in 1212, when 3000 persons perished. They were hemmed in by flames on both sides of the Thames, and mostly died by drowning. Their numbers far exceede.l the estimated loss of life in London's great fire of 1800. Since the latter date there has, however, been no comparable instance in that city, Ihe estimated number of lives lost m the burning of Chicago has never been placed higher than IGO, and about this figure there is a great uncertainty. A few instances might be cited of fires on shipboard, where tie number ,of those tbat perished exceeded 300 ; but the losses by shipwreck have very often been much larger. The sinking of the Royal George while undergoing repairs iv j harbour, and the loss of 600 lives, gave j occasion for one of the noblest poems in i our language. .In recent years the most destructive fire in a pnblic assemblage was i ; that in a church in Santiago, Chili, on i December Bth, 186$, when- 1600 persons, I principally women, were burned. The list of the dead given in Nile's Registrar after the fire in Richmond Theatre in 1811, had less than 70 names, but among them were several of prominence. Among E the comparable events of the last two or three years, the dynamite explosion at Eremerbaven might be mentioned, with its 170 killed and wounded. Such disasters can scarcely be compared with the great sacrifices of life in war, or by sudden convulsions of nature. The calculation has been made by statisticians that up to the present time more than $860,000,000 men have perished in battle. There is a long list of earthquakes whose victims in each case were numbered by thousands. That of Lisbon in 1755 engulfed 50,000' 0f its inhabitants. East ladian cyclones have in different years swept away vast numbers of people r in 1737, 30,000 ; in 1864, 60,000 ; a few weeks ago. 215,000. The lasUnamed calamity exceeds all previous instances- in numbers lost; few of our readers read the account of it without a sigh, but it scarcely cast a passing shadow over their thoughts, while the Brooklyn "oss of 300 lives seems a thing never to be forgotten.