In truth, the Patriots were now put at a sad disadvantage. It is a great triumph to overthrow a great Ministry, but the triumph often carries with it a responsibility which is too much for the victors to bear, and which turns them into the vanquished before long. So it fared with the Patriots. While they were in opposition they had promised, as Sallust says Catiline and his friends did, seas and mountains. Now the time had come to show what they really could do; and, behold, they could do nothing. An opposition has a safe time of it which, being directly adverse on some distinct question, principle, or policy to the party in power, it is able to say, "Let us come into office and we will do the very opposite; we will try to undo all that the present ministers have been doing," and is able to carry out the pledge. But the opposition to Walpole had lived and flourished by finding {243} fault with everything he did merely because it was he who did it, and with his way of doing everything merely because it was his way. Nothing can be easier than for a group of clever and unscrupulous men to make it hot for even the strongest minister if they will only adopt such a plan of action. This was the plan of action of the Patriots, and they carried it out boldly, thoroughly, brilliantly, and successfully. But now that they had come into office they found that they had not come into power. The claim to power had still to be earned for them by the success of their administration; and what was there for them to do? Nothing--positively nothing--but just what their defeated opponents had been trying to do. Hanoverian policy, Hanoverian subsidies, foreign soldiers, standing armies--these were the crimes for which Walpole's administration had been unsparingly assailed. But now came Carteret, and Carteret was on the whole rather more Hanoverian than the King himself. Pulteney? Why, such influence as Pulteney still had left was given to support Newcastle and Pelham, Walpole's own pupils and followers, in carrying out Carteret's Hanoverian policy. [Sidenote: 1743--An irreparable mistake]