ARLY CAREER OF JAMES K. POLK.

When first elected to the House of Representatives in 1824, Mr.
Polk was but twenty-nine years of age. He was re-elected continuously
for fourteen years. He was one of the most pronounced adherents
of Jackson, and joined in the extreme and unreasonable opposition
to the administration of John Quincy Adams. The period of his
service in the House was distinguished by partisanship of a more
bigoted and vindictive type than prevailed at any other time in
the history of that body. He was Speaker during the last Congress
of Jackson's Presidency and during the first under the administration
of Van Buren. When the Whig members forced an inquiry in to the
conduct of Samuel Swartwout, the defaulting collector of customs
for the port of New York,--a case which figured prominently in the
exciting Presidential canvass of 1840,--they would not trust Mr.
Polk with the duty of naming the committee of investigation. The
House itself exercised the power of appointment, to the great
disparagement of the Speaker.

When Mr. Polk closed his service in the Chair, at the end of the
Twenty-fifth Congress, no Whig member could be found who was willing
to move the customary resolution of thanks,--an act of courtesy
which derives its chief grace by coming from a political opponent.
When the resolution was presented by a Democratic Representative
from the South, it was opposed in debate by prominent Whig members.
Henry A. Wise, who five years later supported Mr. Polk for the
Presidency, desired to have the resolution peremptorily ruled out
on a point of order. Sergeant S. Prentiss, the incomparably
brilliant member from Mississippi, attacked it most violently.
His impassioned invective did not stop short of personal indignity
and insult to Mr. Polk. He denied with emphatic iteration that
the Speaker had been "impartial." On the contrary he had been "the
tool of the Executive, the tool of his party." He analyzed Mr.
Polk's course in the appointment of committees, and with much detail
labored to prove his narrowness, his unfairness, his injustice as
a presiding officer. For one, he said, he was "not wiling to give
to Mr. Polk a certificate of good behaviour, to aid him in his
canvass for the governorship of Tennessee, for which he is known
to be a candidate." He believed "this vote of thanks was to be
used as so much capital, on which to do political business," and
he declared with much vehemence that he