ever been at all the same thing), but on the whole he was supremely the
representative sovereign. In this connection one curious and difficult
question may be considered here, though it marks the end of a story
that began with the Norman Conquest. It is pretty certain that he was
never more truly a representative king, one might say a republican king,
than in the fact that he expelled the Jews. The problem is so much
misunderstood and mixed with notions of a stupid spite against a gifted
and historic race as such, that we must pause for a paragraph upon it.

The Jews in the Middle Ages were as powerful as they were unpopular.
They were the capitalists of the age, the men with wealth banked ready
for use. It is very tenable that in this way they were useful; it is
certain that in this way they were used. It is also quite fair to say
that in this way they were ill-used. The ill-usage was not indeed that
suggested at random in romances, which mostly revolve on the one idea
that their teeth were pulled out. Those who know this as a story about
King John generally do not know the rather important fact that it was a
story against King John. It is probably doubtful; it was only insisted
on as exceptional; and it was, by that very insistence, obviously
regarded as disreputable. But the real unfairness of the Jews' position
was deeper and more distressing to a sensitive and highly civilized
people. They might reasonably say that Christian kings and nobles, and
even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as
the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be
accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced
as unchristian; and then, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to the
fury of the poor, whom that useful usury had ruined. That was the real
case for the Jew; and no doubt he really felt himself oppressed.
Unfortunately it was the case for the Christians that they, with at
least equal reason, felt him as the oppressor; and that _mutual_ charge
of tyranny is the Semitic trouble in all times. It is certain that in
popular sentiment, this Anti-Semitism was not excused as
uncharitableness, but simply regarded as charity. Chaucer puts his curse
on Hebrew cruelty into the mouth of the soft-hearted prioress, who wept
when she saw a mouse in a trap; and it was when Edward, breaking the
rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth,
flung the alien financier