y and security have been
substituted for danger and dismay--a strong and dignified peace for
a weak and aggressive war. These changes have been coincident with a
great revolution in domestic politics. Under Whig auspices those
evils had arisen which their successors have now redressed. Under
the administration of Whigs, that flood of calamity was opened up
which has been arrested without their aid; but which could not have
continued its threatened course without the most perilous
consequences to the country, and the heaviest burden of responsibility
on the authors of the mischief.

In such circumstances it might have been expected--if manly courage
or common decency were to be looked for in such a quarter--that on
these Eastern questions the Whig party should this session have
followed one or other of two courses: either that they should have
taken a bold line of opposition, and vindicated their own Indian
policy, while they attacked that of their successors: or that they
should have preserved a prudent silence on subjects where they could
say nothing in their own praise, and have only lifted up their voice
to join the general acclamations of the country for successes in
which, though not achieved by themselves, they had the best reason
to rejoice, as shielding them from the ignominy and punishment which,
in an opposite event, would have been poured out by public
indignation on the heads of the original wrongdoers.

A strong or an honest party would have chosen one or other of these
lines. But the Whigs are neither strong nor honest; and they have
accordingly, in the late Indian discussions in Parlament, pursued a
course of policy in which it is difficult to say whether feebleness
or fraud be the more conspicuous. They have not ventured to
vindicate their own conduct in invading the Affghan country: they
have not dared to dispute the wisdom of their successors in retiring
from it, when the object of a just retribution was accomplished. But
while driven from these points--while forced to acknowledge the
ability and judgment with which the present Governor-General has
applied the forces of the empire to retrieve our honour and
reputation in the East--while unable to point to a single practical
measure as either improperly taken, or improperly omitted by him,
the Whigs could not refrain, on some pretext or other, from marring
the general joy by the discordant hissings of an impotent envy.
Experiencing in an unparalleled