When Walpole resigned in 1742 there was no question of the Whigs giving place to the Tories. The great Tory party of the age of Queen Anne had gone to pieces on the rocks and shoals of Jacobitism. Nearly half a century of Whig rule, together with the cult of peace and prosperity during the long reign of Sir Robert, had done its work. ‘Robinocracy’ had made England safe for Whiggery for another fifty years. It was fully that length of time before the younger Pitt laid the foundations of a new and effective Toryism by bringing about a coalition between Old Whigs of the 1688 tradition, now led by the Duke of Portland, and Edmund Burke and his own personal followers, or ‘Pittites’, in order to fight the French Revolution in arms.

Meanwhile the country got on very well with Whigs in office and Whigs in opposition. They only differed in that ‘Whigs out of place’ talked a good deal about corruption, placemen, standing armies, profligate public expenditure, and the subjection of British interests to those of the King's Electorate of Hanover. Year in, year out, ‘gentlemen out of place’ thundered for an effective Place Bill while in opposition, and conveniently forgot about it when they had the places. They could generally elicit a principle of opposition from the question how much, or how little, the country ought to do in Germany, and when this controversy slept—as the late Richard Pares put it—there was nothing left to divide about, indeed to think about, but who should have the ‘places’.