One of the vouchers in the Comptroller's office played a prominent part in the last of Mr. Marcy's gubernatorial campaigns--a circumstance which, Thurlow Weed says, Mr. Marcy pronounced the most disagreeable of his entire public career. While serving as Supreme Court Judge, and on Circuit in Niagara county, he included in his bill of expenses an item as follows: "For mending my pantaloons, 50c." In the Seward campaign Thurlow Weed, then the editor of the Albany _Evening Journal_, learned of this fact and published the story. It was taken up by the press generally throughout the State, and Mr. Marcy, with all his fine organization and numberless friends, found himself for the time being, like Spain's chivalry, "laughed away." [Illustration: Millard Fillmore (signature) _11th COMPTROLLER_] The item, however, exhibits the scrupulous exactness of the man. Instead of presenting the bill with an indefinite amount of incidentals, he itemized it thus particularly to his own disadvantage; but, as Mr. Weed afterward admitted, it was a credit to his honesty. It was during Mr. Marcy's term that much of the work on the Erie canal was done, and the careful scrutiny which the bills for this work received was largely instrumental in keeping the cost within the estimates. He took ground as chief financial officer of the State against the construction of the Chenango and Genesee Valley canals, for the reason that these canals would not, in his judgment, pay the expenses of maintenance and the interest on the debt which would be incurred in their construction. While friends of the measures endeavored to convince the Legislature that the Comptroller was wrong in his calculation, the result, when these works were finally completed, fully justified the Comptroller's view. As Governor he made some friends, and more enemies, by adhering to the same careful course he had maintained as Comptroller. In 1826 the Legislature created the Canal Board, and the Comptroller was made _ex-officio_ a member of it, and he has continued to act as such member down to the present.