When the Whig party was split into two sections, Pulteney had resigned a valuable place, and had followed the fortunes of Walpole.  Yet, when Walpole returned to power, Pulteney was not invited to take office.  An angry discussion took place between the friends.  The Ministry offered a peerage.  It was impossible for Pulteney not to discern the motive of such an offer.  He indignantly refused to accept it.  For some time he continued to brood over his wrongs, and to watch for an opportunity of revenge.  As soon as a favourable conjuncture arrived he joined the minority, and became the greatest leader of Opposition that the House of Commons had ever seen.

Of all the members of the Cabinet Carteret was the most eloquent and accomplished.  His talents for debate were of the first order; his knowledge of foreign affairs was superior to that of any living statesman; his attachment to the Protestant succession was undoubted.  But there was not room in one Government for him and Walpole.  Carteret retired, and was from that time forward, one of the most persevering and formidable enemies of his old colleague.

If there was any man with whom Walpole could have consented to make a partition of power, that man was Lord Townshend.  They were distant kinsmen by birth, near kinsmen by marriage.  They had been friends from childhood.  They had been schoolfellows at Eton.  They were country neighbours in Norfolk.  They had been in office together under Godolphin.  They had gone into opposition together when Harley rose to power.  They had been persecuted by the same House of Commons.  They had, after the death of Anne, been recalled together to office.  They had again been driven out together by Sunderland, and had again come back together when the influence of Sunderland had declined.  Their opinions on public affairs almost always coincided.  They were both men of frank, generous, and compassionate natures.  Their intercourse had been for many years affectionate and cordial.  But the ties of blood, of marriage, and of friendship, the memory of mutual services, the memory of common triumphs and common disasters, were insufficient to restrain that ambition which domineered over all the virtues and vices of Walpole.  He was resolved, to use his own metaphor, that the firm of the house should be, not Townshend and Walpole, but Walpole and Townshend.  At length the rivals proceeded to personal abuse before a large company, seized each other by the collar, and grasped their swords.  The women squalled.  The men parted the combatants.  By friendly intervention the scandal of a duel between cousins, brothers-in-law, old friends, and old colleagues, was prevented.  But the disputants could not long continue to act together.  Townshend retired, and, with rare moderation and public spirit, refused to take any part in politics.  He could not, he said, trust his temper.  He feared that the recollection of his private wrongs might impel him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to oppose measures which he thought generally beneficial to the country.  He therefore never visited London after his resignation, but passed the closing years of his life in dignity and repose among his trees and pictures at Rainham.