[101] This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington colliers after seventeen days of strike. The masters attempted to evict the pitmen from their houses, an attempt which the pitmen met partly by serious riot and resistance, and partly by destroying the houses they were forced to leave. [102] "Such a thing as a 'just price,' either for labor or for any other commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Ruskin, no existence save in the minds of theorists." (_Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 10, quoted by the _Pall Mall_ in its "Epitome of the Morning Papers" on the same day.) The discussion with the _Gazette_ consisted of the "Work and Wages" letters (see _ante_, pp. 72 _seqq._). [103] See "Fors Clavigera," 1877, Letter 78, Notes and Correspondence, p. 170. MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. III. ROMAN INUNDATIONS. A KING'S FIRST DUTY. 1871. A NATION'S DEFENCES. 1871. THE WATERS OF COMFORT. 1871. THE STREAMS OF ITALY. 1871. THE STREETS OF LONDON. 1871. III. ROMAN INUNDATIONS. [From "The Daily Telegraph," January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," 1873, Letter 33, p. 23.] _A KING'S FIRST DUTY._ _To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_ SIR: May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace rather than to smile with him? In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself he thought of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and scanty waters: "Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus, Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium Regnavit populorum."[104] Now the anger and power of that "tauriformis Aufidus" is precisely because "regna Dauni præfluit"--because it flows past the poor kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their sources--they are so much death, if they once break down unbridled into the plains. At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said that the King of Italy expressed "an earnest desire to do something, as far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate inundations for the future." Now science and industry can do, not "something," but everything, and not merely to mitigate inundations--and, deadliest of inundations, because perpetual, maremmas--but to change them into national banks instead of debts. The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the streams of it.