Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1915-01-15
PROHIBITION AND SUPRA E
NOT FEDERAL QUESTIONS.

Y
Whatever may be ones opionion upon
the subjects of prohibition and female
suffrage. the country is to be congratulated
upon the defeat of the proposed amend
ments Of the Federal Constitution which
aimed to place the liquor traffic and the
right of suffrage under the control Of the
United States government
Indeed. there are now comparatively
few thoughtful people who do not recoe-
nize the evils Of intemperance and the de-
STABILITY Of adopting appropriate and
effective means to suppress the promis-
cuous sale of intoxicants. The traffic in
liquor has been described by so clear
headed writer as the late Judge Cooley
as tolerated business" and every genera
ton for centuries past has felt its blight
and sought to mitigate its consequences.
But while all this is true. it is unnecessary,
in the war upon the saloon, to endanger a
Fundamental principle of our government
by curtailing the police powers of the
States. This is one Of the things which, in
the formation Of the government, the States
insisted upon Safeguarding by specific
Guaranty The right to control its own
internal affairs is one which the State
should never surrender. The encroach-
ments Of the Federal government have
been numerous enough already; and it is
becoming more evident. as time passes,
hot hap he 81
with local affairs intellieently and wisely.
With the growth Of the country, and the
extension of its intercourse with the nations
of the world the purely Federal questions
become more numerous and more COM
plicated every day. They are sufficient to
engage the utmost resources of statesman
ship. To impose upon Congress the bur
den of regulating the police affairs of the
States. which must necessarily vary ac-
cording to location and social and economic
conditions, would result in blind legislation
and in discomfort and friction in every
direction. The suggestion is at best but
an experiment. and it should be self-evi-
dent that sumptuary experiments ought
not to be tried at the expense of consti-
tutional guarantees. which protect valuable
political rights
Federal control Of the suffrage is not less
dangerous in its consequences. The sub
ject of suffrage was very thoroughly de-
bated in the Constitutional Convention, and
in the end it was deemed wisest to leave
it to the States themselves to fix the quail
fications Of their voters. And the reasons
which influenced the great convention in
its decision prevail to-day in all their oriei-
nal force.
The one restriction which has been placed
upon the regulation Of the suffrage by the
States is now generally admitted to have
been a blunder of the worst kind. The Thir-
teenth Amendment was largely RESPONSE
bic for the reconstruction legislation after
the Civil War and the carpet-bag regime of
plumber and ruin in the South. The sug-
eestion Of the odious force bill would have
been impossible without il. Our elections
became more corrupt from the moment it
became operative.
1t may be true that female suffrage will
in some Of the States, bring into the voting
population an element altogether different
from that which followed the Thirteenth
Amendment 1t is also true that in many
States it will introduce a worse element
for no one has yet suggested feasible
plan by which white women alone can be
allowed to vote.
We are not disposed. however. to discus.
the question of female suffrage in tn,
abstract. 1t may or may not be wise anC
right. What we are chiefly concerned
with is the means employed to accomplish
the end; and we think the Thirteenth
Amendment establishes the unwisdom o.
federal control of the suffrage There art
wide differences in conditions in the States
of the Union. What might promote growth
and civic virtue in one section, nigh
wither the roots of progress in another
section, and revive the deviltry in the
South that is still remembered with horror
1t is best to leave our Constitution as i
is. and reserve to the States those funda
mental rights which are only secure wher
the States themselves control the agencie.
by which they are guarded.