31; and he did not now take kindly to giving up
the United States Senate, since the veto message had made success in
the State doubly doubtful. But no other candidate excited any
interest. Enos T. Throop had been practically ridiculed into
retirement. He was nicknamed "Small-light," and the longer he served
the smaller and the more unpopular he became. If we may accept the
judgment of contemporaries, he lacked all the engaging qualities that
usually characterise a public official, and possessed all the faults
which exaggerate limited ability.

Marcy had both tact and ability, but his opposition to the Chenango
canal weakened him in that section of the State. The Chenango project
had been a thorn in the Regency's side ever since Francis Granger, in
1827, forced a bill for its construction through the Assembly,
changing Chenango from a reliable Jackson county to a Granger
stronghold; but Van Buren now took up the matter, assuring the people
that the next Legislature should pass a law for the construction of
the canal, and to bind the contract Edward P. Livingston, with his
family pride and lack of gifts, was unceremoniously set aside as
lieutenant-governor for John Tracy of Chenango. This bargain, however,
did not relieve Marcy's distress. He still had little confidence in
his success. "I have looked critically over the State," he wrote Jesse
Hoyt on the first day of October, "and have come to the conclusion
that probably we shall be beaten. The United States Bank is in the
field, and I can not but fear the effect of fifty or one hundred
thousand dollars expended in conducting the election in such a city as
New York."

This was a good enough excuse, perhaps, to give Hoyt. But Marcy's
despair was due more to the merciless ridicule of Thurlow Weed's pen
than to the bank's money. Marcy had thoughtlessly included, in one of
his bills for court expenses, an item of fifty cents paid for mending
his pantaloons; and the editor of the _Evening Journal_, in his
inimitable way, made the "Marcy pantaloons" and the "Marcy patch" so
ridiculous that the slightest reference to it in any company raised
immoderate laughter at the expense of the candidate for governor. At
Rochester, the Anti-Masons suspended at the top of a long pole a huge
pair of black trousers, with a white patch on the seat, bearing the
figure 50 in red paint. Reference to the unfortunate item often came
upon him suddenly. "Now, ladies and gentlemen," shouted the driv