Wit & Attitude Quote by James Anthony Froude

Power, Froude insists, is a slow-burn moral accounting, not a flash of force. “Superior strength” sounds like the language of armies and empires, but he quietly relocates it from muscle to legitimacy. The trick is the time clause: “in the long run.” That phrase does nearly all the argumentative work, turning history into a courtroom where verdicts arrive late but, in his view, reliably. If you’re winning now by brutality, coercion, or luck, Froude is telling you not to get comfortable; history has an attrition mechanism that favors the side with “right” on it.

The subtext is as much about the historian’s craft as about politics. A Victorian historian wants the past to add up to something: not merely events, but a pattern. Froude’s confidence that “right” eventually translates into “strength” flatters the reader’s desire for a moral arc while also justifying retrospective judgment. It’s also a subtle defense of liberal constitutionalism, the era’s preferred storyline: institutions grounded in consent outlast regimes grounded in fear.

Yet the line carries an imperial aftertaste. In the 19th century, “right” was often the word empires used to launder interests into destiny. Froude, who wrote sympathetically about strong governance and British expansion, can sound less like a neutral observer than a narrator granting history’s winners a moral alibi.

That’s why it works: it’s both promise and threat, blessing and warning. It tells the righteous to endure and tells the powerful that brute advantage decays when it can’t be defended as just.