text:  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