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 degree both the indulgence of a generous nation, who are willing to forget the past in the enjoyment of the present, and the forbearance of high-minded opponents, who could easily have triumphed in the exposure of their disastrous blunders, the Whigs have made a characteristic return, by rancorously assailing the man whom the public views as its benefactor, with captious criticisms on the terms of a proclamation, or hypocritical objections to the transmission of a trophy. With that cunning which the faction have often shown in the use of apparent opportunities, they gained the reluctant concurrence of a few upright men, of whose peculiar scruples they contrived to avail themselves, but with an ignorance of the true English character, for which they are equally distinguished, they overshot the mark, and stand convicted of a design to make a verbal misconstruction the pretence for persecuting an absent man, and to convert honest prejudices into an unconscious instrument of oppression. They have thus earned a large allowance of general contempt, and they have nowhere, perhaps,