lging, it
was said, too freely in strong drink. But if Clinton lacked patience,
and temporarily, perhaps, the virtue of temperance, he did not lack
force of will and strength of intellect. He corresponded with men of
influence; sought the assistance of capitalists; held public meetings;
and otherwise endeavoured to enlist the co-operation of people who
would be benefited, and to arouse a public sentiment which should
overcome doubt and stir into activity men of force and foresight.
Writing from Buffalo, in July, 1816, he declared that "in all human
probability, before the passing away of the present generation,
Buffalo will be the second city in the State."[185] A month later,
having examined "the land and the water with scrutinising eye,
superintending our operations and exploring all our facilities and
embarrassments" from the great drop at Lockport to the waters of the
Mohawk at Utica, he again refers to the future Queen City of the Lakes
with prophetic power. "Buffalo is to be the point of beginning, and in
fifty years it will be next to New York in wealth and population."[186]

[Footnote 185: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's
Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 411.]

[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, Vol. 50, p. 411.]

It is doubtful if any statesman endowed with less genius than Clinton
could have kept the project alive during this period of indifference
and discouragement. Even Thomas Jefferson doubted the feasibility of
the plan, declaring that it was a century in advance of the age. "I
confess," wrote Rufus King, long after its construction had become
assured, "that looking at the distance between Erie and the Hudson,
and taking into view the hills and valleys and rivers and morasses
over which the canal must pass, I have felt some doubts whether the
unaided resources of the State would be competent to its
execution."[187] But Clinton had a nature and a spirit which inclined
him to favour daring plans, and he seems to have made up his mind that
nothing should hinder him from carrying out the enterprise he had at
heart.

[Footnote 187: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus
King_, Vol. 6, p. 97.]

In the end, he compelled the acceptance of his project by a stroke of
happy audacity. A great meeting of New York merchants, held in the
autumn of 1815, appointed him chairman of a committee to memorialise
the Legislature. With a fund of information, obtained by personal
inspection of the route, he set