“Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him.”

— James Anthony Froude

"On the Uses of a Landed Gentry" address in Edinburgh (6 November 1876), published in Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. III (1893), p. 406
Context: The landlord may become a direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian government has been called despotism tempered with assassination. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination.
Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him. A noble lord living in England, two of whose agents had lost their lives already in his service, ordered the next to post a notice in his Barony that he intended to persevere in what he was doing, and if the tenants thought they would intimidate him by shooting his agents, they would find themselves mistaken.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot inste…" by James Anthony Froude?

James Anthony Froude photo

James Anthony Froude 111

English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fras… 1818–1894

Related quotes

“How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. III (p. 79)

“Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

“For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.””

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 38-39

“When a bunch of known corrupt people unite against one man and spare no effort to ridicule him, blackmail him and attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that one man!”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

I, 17
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book I

“Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 34

“That every will must consider every other will its equal — would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 2, Section 11
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

“Unfortunately his IQ seems to be off the scale, in the wrong direction.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 10, “Great Pay and Benefits! Apply Here!” (p. 182)

“Who shot him? I asked.
The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun.”

Dashiell Hammett book Red Harvest

Source: Red Harvest

“307. Hee wrongs not an old man that steales his supper from him.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“[to a teammate, who just shot at him] "I[t]—Don't shoot me!" [chuckles] "What's wrong with you?"”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Insurgency (standalone) (January 29, 2014)

Related topics