Local autonomy

“ To federalize the union was to combine the advantage of common action with liberty to each community to work out its own ideals in education, municipal government and all other matters of local concern. More than that, to federalize the union was to substitute for a rigid bond a bond elastic enough to allow of expansion, eastward to the Atlantic and westward to the Pacific. That principle which has been called provincial rights, or provincial autonomy, might be described more accurately and comprehensively as federalism ”

“ They held that each commune should be self-governing, and, while admitting the right of a central authority to levy men and money for the purposes of the state, they believed that in purely internal matters, as well as in determining the mode in which men and money were to be raised, the local government ought to be supreme. ”

“ I ask that in our own case we should practise with firm and fearless hand what we have so often preached—the doctrine which we have so often inculcated upon others—namely, that the concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair, but the way to strengthen and consolidate, unity. ”

“ If we wish to destroy the life of the city, make it impotent to discharge the functions for which it was organized, then, and then only, it might be feasible to place over it a commission.
But, Honorable Judges, authorities are agreed that cities must be allowed greater freedom of action in local affairs, that municipal home rule is indispensable. The governments of our large cities have been dominated to such an extent by the state legislatures, usually partisan and irresponsible to the locality concerned, that in many cases self-government has become a term, hollow and without meaning. ”

“ During all this period the Nation remembered that it could be more tranquil and orderly if it functioned on the principle that the local communities should control their own peculiarly local affairs under their own local rules. ”

“ The localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of justice between one person and another of which it is the duty of the state to maintain the rigid observance. If the local majority attempts to oppress the minority, or one class another, the state is bound to interpose. ”

“ From even the conservative point of view, local self-government has many advantages. In this country, the glaring evils of the State, especially those forming obstacles to political improvement and social progress, come down from sources above the people. ”

“ But if, in response to a call nowadays frequently heard, the many incipient parties should decide to unite on one or a few things, is it not clear that in natural order the first reforms needed are direct legislation and local self-government? ”

“ There is, obviously, a definite purpose declared to consecrate the same central section of every township of every State which might be added to the federal system, to the promotion 'of good government and the happiness of mankind,' by the spread of 'religion, morality, and knowledge,' and thus, by a uniformity of local association, to plant in the heart of every community the same sentiments of grateful reverence for the wisdom, forecast, and magnanimous statesmanship of those who framed the institutions for these new States, before the constitution for the old had yet been modelled. ”

“ Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. ”

“ The local self-government shall provide for an independent decision according to the law and on its responsibility by the population of the issues of local importance, possession, use and management of the municipal property. ”

“ But in the far-off days, when the system was in practical operation, the unlimited right of creating freemen came to mean that in many cities, towns, and localities of all descriptions a number of outsiders who had no connection by residence, property, or local interest of any kind with the district, and who were wholly irresponsible to the public opinion of the local community, had the right to interfere in the management of its affairs and to become members of its municipal body. ”

“ But even abroad, all those who call themselves the friends of popular liberty do not declaim against centralization, but against irresponsibility. Here the phrase is used against a measure by which strong local administrative bodies of representatives have been created over the greater part of the country, where nothing deserving the name of systematised local administration has heretofore existed. ”

“ To give to the local governments all the discretionary powers which local interests require, is to give them extensive means of harming the country; and, by consequence, the localities themselves.
Till sound opinions on social questions are more extensively diffused, the immediate and remote objects of local governments cannot be reconciled completely. Something, however, may be done in the way of legislation to obviate the difficulty; or rather, to obviate the narrow conceptions of local interests from which the difficulty arises. ”

“ When territorial governments are formed, they are clothed with many of the attributes of sovereignty. These governments are at liberty to legislate and to provide for the well-being of the people, and subject to the provisions of their "organic law," have the complete control of local and police regulations. ”

“ I do not mean centralisation or the removal of that proper control which every local authority should maintain over its own officers. I would maintain intact the great principle of local government, which has been the bulwark of our social and political freedom. But local government may degenerate, and in small towns deteriorate into littleness: local affairs are too frequently avoided by those who are most fitted by intelligence and social standing to take part therein. ”

“ I heartily approve and indorse every pledge of the platform of principles adopted at the Convention. The great essential for municipal progress is home rule in the management of local concerns. Almost as a necessary consequence will we then enjoy that measure of personal liberty which imposes and permits only such restraint of the citizen as is necessary for the peace and protection of all. ”

“ Local self-government, which is the pride of our institutions, will be reconciled with the national supremacy in maintenance of human rights, and the two together will constitute the elemental principles of the Republic. ”

“ It is simply nowhere. The land is there and the people are there, but the form of local government over it and them has been changed from local self-government to a Congressional or a Presidential agency, as the case may be. ”

“ A coalescence of the people into bodies politic in territorial areas now became complete.
The territorial series enters into the plan of government of modern civilized nations. Among ourselves, for example, we have the township, the county, the state, and the United States; the inhabitants of each of which are an organized body politic with powers of local self-government. Each organization is in full vitality and performs its functions within a definite sphere in which it is supreme. ”

“ In fact, sir, in my opinion, true local self-government is the great fountain from which the popular mind draws its healthiest and most invigorating inspirations. It is not only a machinery of political action, but it is one of the most efficient educational agencies of our social system. There is nothing better calculated to make a man understand and protect his interests, nothing more inspiring and instructive to the heart and mind of man than the independent management of his own affairs, upon his own responsibility ”

“ Whether to try for a federal amendment or a national statute, whether to work wholly within each State, or whether it is matter which so depends upon local sentiment and local coöperation that each smallest community centre must work out its own salvation, or secure its own advance in independent work,—this is the problem. ”

“ We also recognize the force of this argument at home, and we leave the people of each state to act upon their own affairs. The people of a city would resent interference in their local affairs by the people of the county although identical in race and language. ”

“ But if a local government, entirely or principally, derives its immediate origin from the locality itself, it naturally tends to clash with the central authority, or with the general administration;—the tendency being greater or less as its territory is larger or smaller, as its immediate origin is more or less popular, and as its attributes are more or less extensive. ”

“ By this cause, acting through ages, an aversion to the central authority, and a disposition to resist or thwart it, has been deeply impressed upon localities; and even in countries (as, for example, France) in which the ancient localities have been effaced, the feelings engendered by a bygone order of things still operate to no inconsiderable extent. Hence a barbarous tendency in the populations and governments of localities to sever their local interests from the interests of the general community. ”

“ The right of local self-government, as known to our system as a constitutional franchise, belongs, under the constitution, to the states and to the people thereof, by whom that constitution was ordained, and to whom, by its terms, all power, not conferred by it upon the government of the United States, was expressly reserved. ”

“ Out of the League's efforts grew a “municipal programme” the fundamental features of which were that every community should have the right of self-government in local affairs without the interference of outside governmental or party machinery; that the city's public property in land, and especially its franchise rights, should be preserved unimpaired; that all barriers should be removed which prevented the popular will from expressing itself freely and effectively ”

“ How local self-government should be organized and how it is possible to do without a bureaucracy has been demonstrated to us by America and the first French Republic, and is still being demonstrated by Canada, Australia and other British Dominions. ”

“ If these powers are exercised in an enlightened spirit the problem of Local Self-Government will be, in a great measure, settled, but the difficulties in the way are so numerous and formidable that nothing short of the strenuous and zealous exertions of the intelligent and wealthy classes of the community, acting in concert for the public welfare, will render Local Government an immediate success. ”

“ But with a system of representation so complete as ours, aided by the facilities furnished by modern science and art for the circulation of opinion, these difficulties disappear, and with a proper constitutional definition, and establishment of the true functions of the central and local governments, the superficies of a territory, or the number of its inhabitants have not necessarily anything to do with the practicability of combining their political interests under one central administration. ”

“ In a country with a great expanse of territory, with peoples of widely differing customs and ideas, local self government in local matters is essential to the peace and happiness of the people in the several communities as well as to the strength and unity of the country as a whole. ”

“ All that belongs to matters of a purely local character, such as education, the administration of justice, the militia, the laws relating to property, police, etc., ought to be referred to the local governments, whose powers ought generally to extend to all subjects which would not be given to the general government. ”

“ Aware that the safeguarding and reinforcement of local self-government in the different European countries is an important contribution to the construction of a Europe based on the principles of democracy and the decentralisation of power ”

“ Municipal home rule, if it were permitted to cover all these things, would be another name for local chaos. The relations between a city and the surrounding country are so intimate, and each depends so much upon the other, that no rigid line of separation between local and general interests can be drawn. ”

“ The Will of the People.—On the continent of Europe rural government is arranged usually by the central authority of the nation; in America it is more independent of national control. On this side of the water the colonial governments often interfered little with local freedom, and after the Revolution the people fashioned their own national organization, and in giving it certain powers jealously guarded their own local privileges. ”

“ It is probable that the area is too vast and the population too scattered and transitory to make it wise at the present time to provide for an elective legislative body, but the conditions calling for local self-government will undoubtedly very soon exist, and will be facilitated by the measures which I have recommended. ”

“ Important as are the functions of a State in the administration of local government, especially in resisting an overbearing centralization, they must not be exalted above the Nation in its own appropriate sphere. ”