He was content to maintain his hold over the respect of the Crown, and to punish able rivals by exclusion from office.

One by one, the younger men of talent, Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, Pitt, were driven into hostility.

He maintained himself in office by a corruption as efficiently administered as it was cynically conceived.

An opposition developed less on principle than on the belief that spoils are matter rather for distribution than for concentration.
The party so formed had, indeed, little ground save personal animosity upon which to fight; and its ablest exertions could only seize upon a doubtful insult to a braggart sea-captain as the pretext of the war it was Walpole's ambition no less than policy to avoid.

From 1726 until 1735 the guiding spirit of the party was Bolingbroke; but in the latter year he quarrelled with Pulteney, nominally its leader, and retired in high dudgeon to France.