'RESOLVED! RESOLVED!' is the common response; for the revolutionary point is touched here.
'FIRST, you know, Caius Marcius is CHIEF ENEMY to the people'—a rude grasp at causes. This captain will establish a common intelligence in his company before they proceed any further; that their acting may be one, and to purpose. For there is no command but that here.
Cit. We know't, we know't.
First Cit. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict?
_Cit. No more talking on't. Let it bone done: away, away.
'One word, good citizens,' cries another, 'who thinks that the thing will bear, perhaps, a little further discussion. And this is the hint for the first speaker to produce his cause more fully. 'GOOD CITIZENS,' is the word he takes up. "We are accounted POOR CITIZENS; the patricians GOOD.' [That is the way the account stands, then.] 'What AUTHORITY surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear.' [They love us as we are too well. They want poor people to reflect their riches. It takes plebeians to make patricians; it takes our valleys to make their heights.]
'The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance. Our sufferance is a gain to them.—Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, and not in thirst for revenge.
Second Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
First Cit. Against him first;—he's a very dog to the commonalty.
Second Cit. Consider you what services he has done for his country?