WHAT Will the "Whigs" do at the present session of Congress -what will they say? Or rather what can they do—what can they say? That is the question-and a question easier for us to put, than for them to answer.

We shrewdly apprehend that not a few of their leading politicians will re-assemble within the halls of the Capitol, on the approaching "First Monday," with feelings much akin to those with which that unfortunate day is regarded by'reluctant school-boys all the world over, and which have gained for it the expressive soubriquet of "Black Monday," or, according to another equally common reading, “Blue Monday." The latter color, perhaps, would be the most appropriate to its present application,-unless the combination of the two, forming that uncertain sort of double hue, a blue-black, might more expressively typify the present nondescript, indefinable ambiguity of their opinions and principles as a party.

The memories of many of them, in the process of resuming their accustomed posts, must doubtless revert, by natural association, to the same occasion one little twelvemonth ago. The association of contrast is not less vivid and rapid in recalling the scenes and impressions of the past, than the association of similarity. The reminiscence must be a most dismally unsatisfactory one; for if the enjoyment of present affluence is enhanced by the recollection of former distress, how sadly reversed the effect, of the contrast of present poverty with the boundless profusion of a former dayespecially when that present poverty is unrelieved by the sustaining consolation of a good conscience!

They then came with bold and haughty front, like the giant exulting in his might, which scorns and scoffs at the resistance to be anticipated from an enfeebled and exhausted foe. It must be confessed that they had the Administration indeed at sore disadvantage. There was the actual distress-the suspension-the stagnation of

industry and business, under the reaction of their former morbid state of excitement-the failure of the State bank "Experiment”— the fulfilment of the threats of disaster so long and loudly thundered against it by the partisans of the Bank of the United Statesthe apparent necessity, to superficial thinkers, of a return to the protection of a powerful central "regulator" to the disordered chaos of the paper currency-as strong a prima facie case against a dominant party, as was ever made out, by an Opposition vigorous, eloquent, ingenious, and thoroughly versed in all the ad captandum arts of partisanship. There was the zeal of hope, now stimulated to a certainty of confidence unknown before, by overwhelming triumphs in all the important popular elections, against the discouragement of division and universal disaster. Never, indeed, was an Administration more hard bested. Never did all circumstances combine to apply a more perfect test to the power of truth and principle, to sustain, single-handed, a cause seemingly abandoned to the destruction of the wrath to come, by every other auxiliary force or influence.

But the Administration stood firm as the rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. We cannot sufficiently express our admiration of that noble and gallant stand. It was one of those crises that occur but at rare intervals, and then teach men great lessons of political truth, worth the experience of centuries, and which remain forever stamped on a nation's history in letters of living light. May those lessons be but rightly read and deeply felt. We have before given some general remarks on the lessons we have been taught by the severe ordeal of the late critical struggle, and shall develope our views on the subject, more fully in future Articles. Our present immediate purpose leads us in rather a different direction.

Overflowing as they were, at the commencement of the last session, with the amplest materials of partisan attack; argument, invective, sarcasm, and all the terrors of panic in a highly excited state of the public mind, how sad, we repeat, the contrast which the Opposition orators must now experience, as they cast about for some "available” means of prosecuting the contest, of which the present period again brings round the necessity of a renewal! Again we ask—and in all soberness and sincerity "only for information”—what will they, what can they have to say? We are indeed at a loss to conjecture; and verily fear that, for very lack even of the slender material usually requisite for the purpose, there will be a lamentable falling off in those copious torrents of Whig eloquence which have been wont to flood the country, at every session, with such a deluge of rhetoric. We shall not again witness the spectacle of last winter, when some three or four scores of bursting orators were to be seen, ranged around in concentric horse

shoe curves,-like so many bottles of spruce-beer, or ginger-pop, straining at their corks, on a sultry summer's day, with all the fury of the frothy effervescence cabin'd, crib'd, confined' within them -each ready with his thunderbolt to hurl, flashing and pealing, upon the devoted head of this most patient of Administrations; and each tormented with anxiety lest the favorable hour should escape him, and all the patriotic eloquence of wrath, intended to electrify all "Bunkum," should die away, for want of a satisfactory opportunity of getting the floor, 'unsyllabled, unsung! A very different spectacle, we venture to predict, will the Speaker have to look round upon at the present session; and as we have often before looked with commiseration upon his unfortunate position, we now tender him our sincere congratulation upon the agreeable contrast to be anticipated.

If we cannot answer the question, of what they will say, it is easy to answer that, of what they will not and cannot say.

Shall we hear again for example, of the ruin brought upon the country by the ignorant "tampering " of this reckless and profligate Administration? Shall we again be pointed to a depreciated currency, an annihilated commerce, a paralyzed industry, an universal distress and distrust, and hear that Administration charged with all the guilt, and held to all the responsibility of this sudden complication of disaster? Shall we again be referred to the sweeping series of Whig triumphs, in all parts of the Union, as that universal sentence of condemnation against the men and measures of the Democratic party, which was to be regarded as decisive of the truth of the charges urged against them, and of the ignominious fate which was soon to visit them with a just, though long delayed retribution? Shall we hear these strings again harped on as of old? Alas, they are too far gone, with time and usage, to yield any more the eloquent music of their first freshness! All this was then urged, powerfully, ingeniously, brilliantly-while the people was still groaning under the actual distress-while the Administration thus charged was still refusing to lend itself to any of the temporary palliatives, for which the suffering interests were so loudly clamoring, and was insisting on following out the same policy to a still further developement of its principles. Yet has it all failed-and, worse than failure, has recoiled upon the party that then so vehemently urged these topics. It is evident that the giant of Democracy, cast for a season to the ground, has gathered itself up with a renewed vigor drawn from the bosom of its mother earth. The charges were made and met, under every circumstance favorable to the accuser and hostile to the accused; and it is manifest that the verdict is already made up, as one of acquittal. The issue was joined on such ground that no middle alternative remained. The one party or the other was right, the decision of which in favor of

either must cast upon the other an overwhelming weight of odium from which it could never hope to recover. The long protracted campaign of political warfare had plainly reached its close; the balance so long held in doubtful suspense could not now but settle itself decisively; and the one party or the other must be left in undisputed possession of the whole field of contest. This truth does not admit of question. The spell of Jacksonism was broken. There were no longer any adventitious circumstances to bias the public judgment, in favor of the Administration, or the substantial merits of the great issue between the parties-no enthusiasm of personal popularity--no delusive paper-money prosperity-none of the consolidated organization of a great majority, continuing to retain the ascendency because once possessed of it. The Administration a year ago was unquestionably in a minority--perhaps we may even safely say, in a small minority-over the Union. A Presidential election at that period would have hurled it out of power, and would have carried in the Opposition almost by acclamation. We have more than once, during the course of the year, made the same admission. If, now, under such relative circumstances, an Administration so situated should be seen maintaining an unquailing front-exhibiting an unwavering confidence of ultimate triumph--meeting and repelling every charge, and hurling them back on its assailantsjustifying itself fully by profound and thorough argument on the principles involved on the controversy at issue, and proving, from the very catastrophe unjustly imputed to its misconduct, the soundness of its views and the wisdom of carrying them still further out into practice and then, within one short year, gradually but surely recovering itself from the first shock of the tempest-not only saving itself from destruction, and maintaining its ground, but regaining much that it had lost, and working its way upward from minority to majority-exhibiting every where immense gains over the results of the elections of last year--recovering Democratic States then lost, and even winning over States that had been under the sway of Federalism from time immemorial--what candid observer, we ask, on such a spectacle, can deny the complete triumph of that Administration; a triumph establishing its ascendency on an impregnable basis, and the overwhelming overthrow of that Opposition, an overthrow to be soon followed, of certain necessity, by its inevitable dissolution.

We may safely, then, assume that these topics will be virtually abandoned. They have been already strained to the utmost, and have proved but "Love's Labor Lost." Again to serve up that same crambe bis recocta would be too nauseating to the stomach of the public sense; and certainly if not effectual last year, but little is to be hoped from a repetition of the dose at the present time. For it is fairly to be presumed, that if its operation has hitherto

been to gain over to the Administration States long bitterly hostile to it, and to enable it to recover the States lost last year, (with the exception of one, in which, however, the Whig majority has been reduced about six thousand) the only effect of its continuance must be to complete the recovery of that one, within the course of another revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

These topics being, then, exhausted and unavailable, what material will remain for the exercise of that eloquence, whose thunders have so often reverberated amidst the multiplied echoes of the Hall of Representatives? It is plainly impossible to get up another panic; and unless an auspicious fortune throw into the midst some minor apples of discord, on incidental questions that may chance to arise, such Whig orators as are determined to make speeches of some sort or other, will find themselves reduced, for very dearth of something to say, to congratulate the Administration on the happy effects of its firm attitude, and of the public sentiment which it stimulated; in forcing the banks from behind their "cotton-bags," compelling a resumption of specie payments and reviving the healthy business of the country, some years earlier, in all probability, than would have been the case, had it yielded to the clamors of the Opposition, and the demands of the moneyed and mercantile interests, at the period of the suspension. This would be a topic worthy of their eloquence and their liberality, and we beg leave particularly to commend it to their attention.

It is not more easy to anticipate what they will do, than what they will say. One thing is very certain-that they cannot rest for another session on the same ground that they occupied through the two last, that of inertia, of doing nothing, and suffering nothing to be done by the Administration. The period within which mere temporizing expedients might profess some show of decency, has gone by. The banks have resumed, and healthy confidence is restored. Business has revived. No farther excuses are possible for the postponement of action, and for confining the efforts of the Opposition to the simple frustration of the destructive fury of the Administration. They must now come forth openly and manfully, and stand on the merits of their own measures, and no longer on the mere negative ground of opposing those of their adversaries. Their two sections, of National Bank Whigs and State Bank Conservatives, must now come together, and on comparing notes must settle between themselves upon which of their respective lines of policy they will uuite. The issue can no longer remain “SubTreasury or No Sub-Treasury," but must be, positively and distinctly, between the former on the one hand, and a National Bank, or else a State Bank system, on the other. This can no longer be avoided, no longer procrastinated. They cannot again leave the public treasury in its present unsettled and exposed condition, with