ou go," favoured
a "forty million debt;" and this became the great campaign cry of the
Democrats in two elections. On the other hand, the Whigs maintained
that the canals had enriched the people and the State, and that their
future prosperity depended upon the enlargement of the Erie canal, so
that its capacity would meet the increasing demands of business. In
the end, the result showed how prophetically Seward wrote and how
wisely Ruggles figured; for, although the Erie canal, in 1862, had
cost $52,491,915.74, it had repaid the State with an excess of
$42,000,000.

In the midst of so many recommendations, one wonders that Seward had
nothing to say for civil service reform. We may doubt, and with
reason, whether anything he might have said could have strengthened
the slight hold which such a theory then had in the minds of the
people, but it would have brought the need of reform strikingly before
the country to bear, in time, ripe fruit. The Whig party, however, was
not organised to keep Democrats in office, and no sooner had the
Albany _Journal_ announced Seward's election than applications began
pouring in upon the Governor-elect until more than one thousand had
been filed. Seward afterward said that, of these applications, only
two came from persons living west of Cayuga Bridge, although the
eighth district had given him a majority equal to his entire majority
in the State.

Under the Constitution of 1821, there were more places to fill by
appointment than under the Constitution of 1846, and twice as many as
now exist. In 1839, the Governor not only appointed port-wardens,
harbour-masters, notaries public, and superintendents and
commissioners of various sorts, but he nominated judges, surrogates,
county clerks, examiners of prisons, weighers of merchandise,
measurers of grain, cullers of staves, and inspectors of flour,
lumber, spirits, salt, beef and pork, hides and skins, and fish and
oil, besides numerous other officers. They applied formally to the
Governor and then went to Weed to get the place. Just so the Whig
legislators went through the form of holding a caucus to select state
officers after the slate had been made up. John C. Spencer became
secretary of state; Bates Cook of Niagara County, comptroller; Willis
Hall of New York City, attorney-general; Jacob Haight, treasurer; and
Orville L. Holley, surveyor-general. Thurlow Weed's account, read
with the knowledge that he alone selected them, is decidedly