If we judged everyone by today’s standards, very few people in the past would receive a passing grade. I sure hope future people aren’t as harsh with us as we are with our forebears.
In sports, we judge the best players against players of their own generation, because the sports change so much through time – sports culture, technology, fan influence, marketing, conditioning, equipment, strategy. A player today is not playing the same game, in the same conditions, as someone who played it 50 years ago,
So why don’t we cut a little bit of slack to public figures of yore? They had no idea where we were moving culturally. Lord Jeff apparently did some pretty unsavory things. Well that’s bad, but maybe we ought to try to put ourselves in his shoes, back in the dark ages he lived in.
OP, sounds like you’ll be cheering for a pachyderm either way. hehe