Walpole's speech, and the whole of the debate of which it made so striking a feature, could not but have a powerful effect on the general elections. Parliament was dissolved on April 10, 1734, after having nearly run the full course of seven years. Seldom has a general election been contested with such a prodigality of partisan fury and public corruption. Walpole scattered his purchase-money everywhere; he sowed with the sack and not with the hand, to adopt the famous saying applied by a Greek poetess to Pindar. In supporting two candidates for Norfolk, who were both beaten, despite his support, he spent out of his private fortune at least 10,000 pounds; one contemporary says 60,000 pounds. But the Opposition spent just as freely--more freely, perhaps. It must be remembered that even so pure-minded a man as Burke has contended that "the charge of systematic corruption" was less applicable, perhaps, to Walpole "than to any other minister who ever {20} served the Crown for such a length of time." The Opposition were decidedly more reckless in their incitements to violence than the friends of the Ministry. The _Craftsman_ boasted that when Walpole came to give his vote as an honorary freeman at Norwich the people called aloud to have the bribery oath administered to him; called on him to swear that he had received no money for his vote. All the efforts of the Patriots, or the representatives of the country interest, as they now preferred to call themselves, failed to bring about the end they aimed at. They did, indeed, increase their parliamentary vote a little, but the increase was not enough to make any material difference in their position. All the wit, the eloquence, the craft, the courage, the unscrupulous use of every weapon of political warfare that could be seized and handled, had been thrown away. Walpole was, for the time, just as strong as ever. [Sidenote: 1735--Swift's opinion of Arbuthnot]