kely the latter would not have been forced upon him.
Without a convention bill and a canal veto, the party would not have
divided seriously, John Young would not have become a popular hero,
and the Anti-Renters could not have held the balance of power. To
prevent the calling of a constitutional convention, therefore, or at
least to have confined it within limits approved by the Hunkers, was
the Governor's great opportunity. It would not have been an easy
task. William C. Crain had a profound conviction on the subject, and
back of him stood Michael Hoffman, the distinguished and unrelenting
Radical, determined to put the act of 1842 into the organic law of the
State. But there was a time when a master of political diplomacy could
have controlled the situation. Even after permitting Crain's defeat
for speaker, the appointment of Michael Hoffman to the judgeship
vacated by Samuel Nelson's transfer to the federal bench would have
placed a powerful lever in the Governor's hand. Hoffman had not sought
the office, but the appointment would have softened him into a friend,
and with Michael Hoffman as an ally, Crain and his legislative
followers could have been controlled.

[Footnote 362: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 756. _Appendix._]

It is interesting to study the views of Wright's contemporaries as to
the causes of his defeat.[363] One thought he should have forced the
convention and veto issues in the campaign of 1845, compelling people
and press to thresh them out a year in advance of his own candidacy;
another believed if he had vetoed the convention bill a canal
appropriation would not have passed; a third charged him with trusting
too much in old friends who misguided him, and too little in new
principles that had sprung up while he was absent in the United States
Senate. One writer, apparently the most careful observer, admitted the
influence of Anti-Renters and the unpopularity of the canal veto, but
insisted that the real cause of the Governor's defeat was the
opposition of the Hunkers, "bound together exclusively by selfish
interests and seeking only personal advancement and personal
gain."[364] This writer named Edwin Croswell as the leader whose wide
influence rested like mildew upon the work of the campaign, sapping it
of enthusiasm, and encouraging Democrats among Anti-Renters and those
favourable to canals to put in the knife on election day. Such a
policy, of course, it was ar