What had fanned popular prejudice into a flame during the uproar over the Excise Bill was the violence of the so-called "Patriots." In the absence of a strong opposition and of great impulses to enthusiasm a party breaks readily into factions; and the weakness of the Tories joined with the stagnation of public affairs to breed faction among the Whigs. Walpole too was jealous of power; and as his jealousy drove colleague after colleague out of office they became leaders of a party whose sole aim was to thrust him from his post. Greed of power indeed was the one passion which mastered his robust common sense. Townshend was turned out of office in 1730, Lord Chesterfield in 1733; and though he started with the ablest administration the country had known, Walpole was left after twenty years of supremacy with but one man of ability in his cabinet, the Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke. With the single exception of Townshend, the colleagues whom his jealousy dismissed plunged into an opposition more factious and unprincipled than has ever disgraced English politics. The "Patriots," as they called themselves, owned Pulteney, a brilliant speaker and unscrupulous intriguer, as their head; they were reinforced by a band of younger Whigs--the "Boys," as Walpole named them--whose temper revolted alike against the inaction and cynicism of his policy, and whose fiery spokesman was a young cornet of horse, William Pitt; and they rallied to these the fragment of the Tory party which still took part in politics, a fragment inconsiderable in numbers but of far greater weight as representing a large part of the nation, and which was guided for a while by the virulent ability of Bolingbroke, whom Walpole had suffered to return from exile, but to whom he had refused the restoration of his seat in the House of Lords. Inside Parliament indeed the invectives of the "Patriots" fell dead before Walpole's majorities and his good-humoured contempt; so far were their attacks from shaking his power that Bolingbroke abandoned the struggle in despair to return again into exile, while Pulteney with his party could only take refuge in a silly secession from Parliament. But on the nation at large their speeches and pamphlets, with the brilliant sarcasms of their literary allies, such as Pope or Johnson, did more effective work. Unjust indeed as their outcry was, the growing response to it told that the political inactivity of the country was drawing to an end. It was the very success of Walpole's policy which was to bring about his downfall; for it was the gradual closing of the chasm which had all but broken England into two warring peoples that allowed the political energy of the country to return to its natural channels and to give a new vehemence to political strife. Vague too and hollow as much of the "high talk" of the Patriots was, it showed that the age of political cynicism, of that unbelief in high sentiment and noble