Very well. If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory
powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the first
Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you drove him
with a whip.
THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN
I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King John.
But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he
believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a
whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not
sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or
merely a humdrum respectability.
I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is a
protest against our waxwork style of history. Everybody is in a
particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always
hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always marrying,
and Charles I always having his head cut off; Alfred rapidly and in
rotation making his people's clocks and spoiling their cakes; and King
John pulling out Jews' teeth with the celerity and industry of an American
dentist. Anything is good that shakes all this stiff simplification, and
makes us remember that these men were once alive; that is, mixed, free,
flippant, and inconsistent.
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