Lynchburg Virginian

TO THE WHIGS.

We are beaten; and it becomes us now to inquire into the causes of our defeat, and to consecrate their struggles which seems so apparent to themselves that they wonder at our blindness. Their fall from power, however, is not the end of the contest. Later, they are sure to result in the consummation of our hopes. The triumph of the administration party at the late election, has been their unwearied activity and irrepressible zeal. When last year terminated, did they relax their exertions? Did they therefore surrender the reins of power to the hands of their opponents for a renewal of the conflict? They buckled on their armor and appealed from the people at the polls to the people in the bushes—from Philip sober to Philip drunk. They commenced a system of active and close electioneering. Members of the last Legislature, they were operating under the guise of getting up instructions to the present administration is connected with the future. Jackson himself. They must see that opposition to a man who has crawled in his own slime to the footstool of Executive power, and who has so far wormed himself into favor as to secure a Presidential nomination for the successor. Support does not necessarily involve opposition to the present administration. Jackson cannot be expelled from his office; nor can any measure to which he has avowed his decided opposition be carried, in the teeth of his veto; nor, backed as he will be by majorities in both branches of Congress, can any object which he wishes to accomplish, now in his own hands. The people have so decided, and upon them be the consequences, whether for good or for evil. But acquiescence in the will of the people, so far as Gen. Jackson is concerned, we repeat, does not require us to assume that its expression points, with infallible certainty, to the choice of his successor. Nay, we contend that although it may exercise a great influence upon that choice, and is in that point of view most deeply to be regretted, it furnishes anything but a pledge to support, as next President, the man who is thus presented to the American community as the apparent favorite of a majority of the members elect of the next Legislature of Virginia. That Virginia is still a Jackson State, we shall not venture to deny, though we may doubt it. That it is a Van Buren State, however, we do not believe, and we never shall so believe, until a majority of her people shall have solemnly said so at the polls. And we have the most conclusive reasons for our incredulity on this point. The next Presidential election was not the test question in the late election; for, although believing that it ought to be so, the Whigs endeavored to bring it to bear as extensively as possible, their opponents dexterously evaded this issue, declaring that it was too soon to embark in the discussion of that subject—sedulously avoiding an avowal of their individual preferences—pursuing the 'non committal' policy of Harry, who is, after all, only conjecturally their favorite—and contending that the people were called upon to decide, not who should be the next President, but whether instructions were or were not binding upon representatives—which no man denies—whether the Bank should be rechartered, which no one believes to be within the range of possibility—and whether Leigh should be instructed out of his seat, which, although the Van Burenites have obtained a majority in the next Legislature, we doubt whether they will have the boldness to attempt. The question of the succession was evidently, then, only partially before the people—our opponents, themselves, dodged it. They were afraid to meet it. Even now, many of them, though classed as Van Buren men, do not acknowledge the justice of the classification; others avow that they are unconditionally in favor of Judge White; and others only admit that they are Van Burenites contingently—that circumstances may force them to give him their support, which, voluntarily and as matter of choice, they will never do. In addition to this fact, which is of itself conclusive, it may be mentioned, that hundreds—we know many such—who supported the administration candidates this spring, did so rather from the force of existing party influences than from a regard to prospective events—men who are decidedly opposed to Van Buren, and who, when the issue shall be fairly made up between him and Judge White, will rally under the banners of the latter. Many others, who prefer Judge White, refused to vote for the Whig candidates, from an impression, artfully excited and industriously kept alive by our opponents, that the nomination of the Judge was only a trick of the Whigs—that they were not sincere in their promise to support him—and that, as soon as they should succeed in dividing the Jackson ranks by the use of his name, they would desert him, and bring forward one of their own party. All the causes of defeat will cease to operate, when Judge White and Mr. Van Buren shall be fairly brought before the people; and though we are neither prophet nor the son of a prophet, we shall venture the prediction that when that day shall arrive the vote of Virginia will be given to Judge White by an overwhelming majority. It cannot be otherwise. In our next we shall have a few words to the friends of Judge White,—to whatever party they may belong. The Jackson papers are publishing a list of the State officers, showing that a majority of them are Whigs next winter. This is preparatory to mercy the axe will be wielded by those the welkin ring with cries of proscription last winter two fattening officers out who had been public crib were uby cled is th n own favorite process of rotation.