“Whether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon man's labour, and administrating intelligence. For centuries after centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain desert under the rage of their own rivers; nor only desert, but plague-struck. The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to field -- would have purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom -- now overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind; its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner this wealth "goes where it is required." No human laws can withstand its flow. They can only guide it: but this, the lending trench and limiting mound can do so thoroughly, that it shall become water of life -- the riches of the hand of wisdom; or, on the contrary, by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has been too often, the last and deadliest of national plagues: water of Marah -- the water which feeds the roots of all evil.”

UNTO THIS LAST - Essay III: Qui Judicatis Terram

Sir John Everett Millais (1853-54): John Ruskin