Local Option is a term for the power which temperance reformers have of late sought to secure for the ratepaying inhabitants of any community, enabling them to regulate the liquor traffic within their bounds as to a certain majority of them shall seem best, either by maintaining unchanged, increasing, diminishing, or wholly suppressing the houses for the sale of intoxicating liquors. See LICENSING, LIQUOR LAWS, and TEMPERANCE.
Local Option
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 6: Humber to Malta, p. 678
Source scan(s): p. 0693