The national prohibitionist. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1907-1911, 1908-02-13
February 10, 1908
LOCAL OPTION
BY F. M. MCCARTNEY

IN government which gives to each county, town
ship, municipality or individual the right to con-
troll those subjects and matters which concern
themselves alone, and are not such subjects and
matters as naturally and necessarily concern
larger unit of government.
Against this principle no objections, it seems
to me- can be raised 1t is fundamental in our
republican form of government and has been
discussed under the aliases of Popular Sow
ereignty" Home Rule" ETC. But when an at
tempt is made to apply it to subject which nat
uraly concerns the whole people of the state,
the principle itself is violated and the object for
which popular government is founded is de-
feated Right and wrong then become in the
sovereign individuality of the state a mere mat
ter of local caprice or option and one part of
the state is arrayed against another in so in
congruous manner as to make it a crime to do
in one part thereof what is perfect right to do
in another.
Abraham Lincoln, in discussing this subject of
popular sovereignty" in an address delivered at
Columbus in 1853 said & quote from memory:
Il conceive popular sovereignty in the abstract
to mean that man has the right to do what he
please with that which concerns himself alone,
and community state has right to con-
IL
With such view of the doctrine | am not to
be quoted as Directing, and | conceive it to be
the basis upon which Our government is built.
But when the subject is one which con-
Germs the whole people, how recreant to our duty
will we be if we relegate it to the option of
few"
No palmer violation of this principle can be
found than the effort to apply it to the liquor
question in the RELOCATION of the question to
townships, cities or counties of the states The
objection is not to the option but to the re1ega-
ton of the option to local communities which
have not the right logically or naturally, or
even possibly because the results of the business
of trafficking in Intoxicating liquors cannot be- in
herently, naturally nor possibly confined to such
localities
The liquor traffic, from the manufacturing to
the selling, wholesale retail, produces certain
natural and inevitable results, viz. crime, pauper
ism, insanity and disorders of public and gen
eral nature which affect the people of the whole
state. If the crime, paupersm, insanity, ETC., pro-
duced by the liquor traffic in the district town
ship or county voting wet" could be confined tc
the people of that locality and the results did not
affect every other locality of the state directly
indirectly, the option whether not the traffic
should be carried on within that locality would
inhere in the people of that locality. But the
suits of the traffic cannot be- in the nature of the
case so confined. Every citizen of the state is
directly or indirectly interested and affected by
the traffic wherever carried under the
sovereignty of the state.
The people in the ''dry" counties will be taxed
to support state institutions which are rendered
necessary to care for the criminals idiots and in
sane from the wet counties. People of dry
counties will be shot, stabbed and otherwise dis
turbed by the citizens made drunken and ire
SDOnSlDle IN the wet counties.