Nevertheless, the politicians were slow in recognising the necessity of amending the State Constitution. Although trouble increased from year to year, governors avoided recommendations; and legislators hesitated to put in motion the machinery for correcting abuses. After Clinton had defeated Tompkins for governor, in 1820, however, the agitation suddenly blazed into a flame. Tammany resolved in favour of a convention having unlimited powers to amend the Constitution. Following this suggestion, Governor Clinton, in his speech to the Legislature in November, 1820, recommended that the question be submitted to the people. But the Bucktails, indifferent to the views of their opponents, pushed through a bill calling for a convention with unlimited powers, whose work should subsequently be submitted in gross to the people for ratification or rejection. Governor Clinton preferred a convention of limited powers, a convention that could not abolish the judiciary or turn out of office the only friends left him. Nevertheless, it was not easy for a governor, who loved popularity, to take a position against the Bucktail bill; for the popular mind, if it had not yet formally expressed itself on the subject, was well understood to favour a convention. When, therefore, the bill came before the Council of Revision, Clinton thought he had taken good care to have a majority present to disapprove it, without his assistance. Van Ness and Platt were absent holding court; but, of the others, Joseph C. Yates, the only Bucktail on the bench, was presumably the only one likely to favour it. Chancellor Kent, in giving his reasons for disapproving the measure, contended that the Legislature had no constitutional authority to create a convention of unlimited powers, and, if it did, it should require the convention to submit its amendments to the people separately and not in gross. Spencer agreed with the Chancellor. Yates, as expected, approved the bill, but there was consternation in the Council when Woodworth agreed with Yates. Woodworth was the creature of Clinton. He had made him a judge, and, having done so, the Governor relied with confidence upon his support, in preference to that of either Van Ness or Jonas Platt. It recalls the mistake of the historic conclave which elected a Pope whom the cardinals believed too feeble to have any will of his own, but who suddenly became their master. One can easily understand Clinton's dilemma. He wanted the bill disapproved without his aid; Woodworth's action compelled him to do the very thing he had planned to avoid. To the day of his death, Clinton never got over the affront. "Yates and Woodworth were both frightened and have damned themselves," he wrote Henry Post, on the 27th of November, 1820. "The latter supposed also that he would distinguish himself by his independence. I don't know a fellow more intrinsically despicable. I intend the first convenient opportunity to cut him to the quick.