But
this is not the case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the senate should
show their 'cares' for the people, lest their 'cares' should be
construed into 'fears', to the subversion of all due authority; and
he is no sooner disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people
not only of the cares of the state, but of all power to redress
themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to exclaim:
Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,
And occupations perish.
This is but natural: it is but natural for a mother to have more
regard for her son than for a whole city; but then the city should
be left to take some care of itself. The care of the state cannot,
we here see, be safely entrusted to maternal affection, or to the
domestic charities of high life. The great have private feelings of
their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must
curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of
the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to
them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of
OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR
wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude. If they had the
superior knowledge ascribed to them (which they have not) it would
only render them so much more formidable; and from Gods would
convert them into Devils.
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