At home or far away—the call is equally instant—here, for want of more extended physical science, there is plague in our streets, famine in our fields; the pest strikes root and fruit over a hemisphere of the earth, we know not why; the voices of our children fade away into silence of venomous death, we know not why; the population of this most civilized country resists every effort to lead it into purity of habit and habitation—to give it genuineness of nourishment, and wholesomeness of air, as a new interference with its liberty; and insists vociferously on its right to helpless death.
— from Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2 being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 by John Ruskin