People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1894 — Gerrett Smith’s Idea of Political Parlies. [ARTICLE]

Gerrett Smith’s Idea of Political Parlies.

Gerrett Smith, the great abolitionist, one of the founders of the republican party, and now a favorite republican idol—a few years ago thousands of his speeches were industriously peddled as campaign documents by the republican national committee —said in a speech at Pelersboro a short time before his death in 1871: “A very him-u table evil is the education of ide people into the belief that a permanent political party is a great good; and, therefore, that such a party as the republican or democratic party ought not to be broken up. But a permanent political party, with the constant tendency of every such party to deterioration, is a heavy curse—for it plants itself with great, and too frequently with invincible power., in the way of 9,11 progress, and clings for its own existence to the wrongs with which it is indentified. No other but temporary political parties are justifible—no other but such as occasions call for.”