Father of the Bill of Rights: by drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights, on which the U.S. Bill of Rights was based, George Mason left a legacy of freedom for future generations.

As Americans, we like to throw phrases around, such as "the right to bear arms" and "the right to free speech," the "right to a fair trial," and "the right to peaceful assembly." And most Americans have at least a vague notion that these "rights" are protected by our Constitution--the "Bill of Rights." But not many citizens of our fair country know how the Bill of Rights came to be a part of our Constitution, and even fewer know who was most instrumental in making sure that future generations of Americans would continue to enjoy the rights we take for granted--George Mason. It is a cruel irony that it was Mason's resolute battle for a bill of rights that deprived him of a place in the list of the most well-known Founding Fathers of this country--those who signed the Constitution.

Born in 1725, George Mason was somewhat older than many of the Founding Fathers. His next-door neighbor, a certain young man who owned Mount Vernon, admired Mason and spent a fair amount of time with him. Tall, rawboned George Washington made a sharp contrast to Mason, who was small and somewhat plump. But although their physiques differed, their minds ran in similar channels. They frequently shared cuttings of rare fruit trees and shrubs, exchanged gifts of venison or pheasant, and often rode together, surveying the common boundary between Mount Vernon and Mason's plantation, Gunston Hall. More importantly, though, Mason and Washington shared a concern for the future of Virginia and the rest of the colonies.

Mason lost his father to a boating accident on the Potomac River at age 10, and went to study at his uncle's library three years later. His uncle, John Mercer, was a lawyer, and had a collection of 1,500 volumes (a vast collection in those days)--a third of which were law books. Amid these tomes, Mason was exposed to the likes of John Locke (an exponent of the natural rights of man), Sir Edward Coke (radical, in his time, with ideas such as no taxation without representation, no imprisonment without cause, and man had rights which no monarch could defy), John Milton (who pleaded for freedom of the press in his Areopagitica), John Lilburne (no man can be forced to testify against himself), James Harrington (in praise of written constitutions), and Algernon Sidney (a supporter of republican government and a fierce opponent of oppression). These political philosophers, along with many history books (such as on the Roman Empire) formed Mason's foundation of opinion on taxation, representation, freedom and equality, and the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, privacy, property, and happiness.

Call of Duty

As an adult, Mason suffered from regular attacks of severe gout, which often reduced him to hobbling about for a month or more on crutches. He was also prone to violent chest colds and a recurring digestive complaint that would put him in bed for days. Despite these health issues, Mason maintained an active hand in running his plantation and raising his nine children. Although he preferred the relative quiet and solitude of plantation life, Mason also took his public duty seriously. He began his public service career soon after his marriage in 1750, as a justice of the peace. Nine years later, he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, as was George Washington.

After that session, Mason remained at home, but kept in close touch with Washington, who continued to serve in the House of Burgesses. And it was to Mason that Washington, and another friend and member of the House, George Fairfax, turned when the Stamp Act was passed in 1765. They asked Mason, with his excellent grasp of law, to draw up a plan by which landlords could take legal action against a tenant who was behind in his rent--without using a stamped document (and thereby avoiding the hated stamp tax).

Although England repealed the Stamp Act, by 1768 the Townshend Acts (which taxed essential imports to the colonies, such as glass, paper, and tea) were passed, further annoying the colonists. Washington asked Mason for assistance in drawing up resolutions that would establish a boycott on the taxed items. Washington presented Mason's resolutions to the House of Burgesses, and they were passed with only one major change. (Mason had also recommended boycotting exporting goods to England, but the Assembly did not approve this resolution.)

In 1773, Mason's beloved wife, Ann, passed away, leaving Mason with nine motherless children to look after. Mason took his wife's death very hard, mourning her for a year. But then, events in the colonies thrust him upon the public scene once again. He was elected a delegate to the Fairfax County Convention, at which he was then elected a delegate to the first Continental Congress, although he declined to go on account of his family responsibilities.

At the Fairfax County Convention, Mason put forth numerous resolutions that he had been asked to write by the convention's chair, George Washington. His resolutions, including the non-exportation resolution that had failed before, were passed by the Fairfax County Convention--from there they made their way to the House of Burgesses (the Virginia Resolves of August 1774), and thence to the Continental Congress (the Resolves of the Continental Congress, October 1774).

Although he declined to attend the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, or at least sit in the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, Mason did accept nomination to the Fairfax County Committee of Safety, and began devising a plan for a county militia. While addressing a meeting of the committee in 1775, Mason urged: "In all our associations, in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim--that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently derived from the people."

Declaration of Rights

Despite his devotion to his family, Mason also was pulled by his country's needs, and reluctantly agreed to take Washington's place (who was by now commander of the Continental Army) at the Virginia Convention, July 1775. In 1776, he again was a delegate to the Virginia Convention, and at that convention, he drafted the Virginia Constitution and the Virginia Declaration of Rights--the first colony to do so. The Virginia Declaration of Rights begins:

   That all men are, by nature, equally
   free and independent and have certain
   inherent rights of which they
   cannot by any compact deprive or
   divest their posterity: Namely the enjoyment
   of life and liberty with the
   means of acquiring and possessing
   property and the pursuing and obtaining
   of happiness and safety.

Here are highlights of some of Mason's 18 points in the Virginia Declaration of Rights:

* That "all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the people";

* That government ought to assure the "protection, and security of the people";

* That government should have three separate branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial;

* That an accused man has a right to know the nature of his crime, to be confronted by his accusers, and to be given a speedy trial by jury, and that no man can be forced to give evidence against himself;

* That freedom of the press, "one of the great bulwarks of liberty," must be assured; and,

* That all men should enjoy the "fullest toleration in the exercise of religion."

Do all these sound familiar? They should--the other 12 colonies copied Mason's work, with but few changes, as they drafted their own constitutions and bills of rights. Mason's words are also echoed in our Declaration of Independence (which was presented to Congress more than two weeks after the Virginia Assembly approved the Declaration of Rights).

Convention Controversy

Mason's work also significantly affected the federal Constitution a decade later. But the transition from Virginia Declaration to federal Bill of Rights wasn't easy. Both Mason and Washington attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Mason was 62; Washington 55. But a new, younger generation was also present--Alexander Hamilton was under 30, James Madison was 35, and Edmund Randolph (then governor of Virginia) was just over 25. "They are so young, all so young," wrote Mason to Washington. Although all these men championed liberty, the younger generation (as always) often differed from the older in how to best serve that cause. Mason was concerned as to whether their vision for the preservation of liberty coincided with his--and in many cases, it turned out, they did indeed differ. But age wasn't the only cause for disagreement. Eventually even he and Washington would severely disagree on the Constitution.

As one Mason biographer, Florette Henri, wrote, it was at the Constitutional Convention that "all the threads of the warp and weft of his life, the practical and the philosophical, came together in a fabric of brilliant color and dazzling pattern. And what he said and did at Philadelphia were the crowning achievements of his lifetime." Indeed, Mason was one of the five most frequent speakers at the convention. During those sweltering days in Philadelphia, he made many contributions to the debate that led to the text of the final document. Here are just a few of his arguments:

* Only the House of Representatives should have the power to tax and to appropriate funds because "the purse strings should be in the hands of the representatives of the people."

* The power to declare war should not be given to the president because "he is not safely to be trusted with it; or to the Senate, because [it is] not so constructed as to be entitled to it."

* "To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

But on many counts, Mason, despite vehement and eloquent speeches, was unsuccessful. The Constitution was to be sent to the states for ratification without several features Mason deemed critical: a bill of rights, a limit to how long a single person could serve as president, more limitations on the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, and more limitations on the power of the Senate. These things, said Mason, were necessary to ensure the "inalienable rights" of man. Without these things, said Mason, he couldn't sign. "I would sooner chop off my right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands?" he declared. Of the delegates present during the signing of the Constitution, only Mason and two others watched the signing while refraining from adding their signatures.

And although Mason was a delegate to the 1788 Virginia Convention, he did not vote for ratification--a move that was to sever his friendship with Washington permanently. No more exchanges of cider in the fall, of cuttings in the spring, no more comradely rides in the cool woods. After Mason's refusal to support the Constitution, Washington referred to him as his "quondam friend." Mason's conscientious objections had cost him dearly.

But even if he had known the cost in advance, it is doubtful he would have acted differently. In his will, Mason wrote:

   I recommend it to my sons, from my
   own experience in life, to prefer the
   happiness of independence and a private
   station to the troubles and vexations
   of public business; but if either
   their own inclination or the necessity
   of the times should engage them in
   public affairs, I charge them, on a
   father's blessing, never to let the motives
   of private interest or ambition,
   induce them to betray, nor the terror
   of poverty and disgrace, or the fear of
   danger or of death deter them from
   asserting the liberty of their country,
   and endeavoring to transmit to their
   posterity those sacred rights to which
   themselves were born.

Mason lived to see at least one of his objections to the Constitution answered--the Bill of Rights, based on his work 15 years earlier, became law in 1791. At Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788, Edmund Pendleton, chairman of the convention, put Mason on a committee to draw up a bill of rights and amendments. James Madison presented a draft of such a bill of rights to the First Congress the following year. As Madison was a close friend of Mason, and knew how interested Mason was in a bill of rights, it is reasonable to assume they may have discussed the content of the document Madison was to present. Certainly, portions of the Bill of Rights read almost word-for-word the same as the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

In October 1792, only a few months after the Bill of Rights was ratified, Mason passed away. We can thank God for creating Mason when we needed him the most.

RELATED ARTICLE: The genius of the Bill of Rights.

Although George Mason--along with Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and others--argued vociferously for adding a bill of rights to the Constitution, not everyone agreed with this plan of action.

The argument against adding a bill of rights to the Constitution centered around the following main points:

* Rights are inalienable--that is, they are of divine origin and cannot be conferred upon a people by a document, since the people already possess these rights in the first place. As Alexander Hamilton argued in his 1775 essay "The Farmer Refuted": "[T]he sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

* Since the federal government only possesses those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and the people do not surrender any rights under this Constitution, there is no need for a bill of rights. In fact, in The Federalist, No. 84, Alexander Hamilton contended that a bill of rights was not only unnecessary, but dangerous, because it "would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than was granted. For why declare that this shall not be done which there is no power to do?"

* In our constitutional system, most posers of government remain with the individual states, and the protection of rights is properly a state issue, to be decided by a state's constitution and court system. Therefore, since state constitutions normally contain than a bill (or declaration) of rights, adding such a thing to the U.S. Constitution would be not only redundant, but an infringement of states' rights.

When James Madison (a good friend of Mason) presented the Bill of Rights to the First Congress, he took into account these arguments as well as the arguments for a bill of rights. Mason and his supporters were appeased by the First through the Eighth Amendments, which do not claim to grant rights, but prohibit the federal government from violating rights the people already have. Moreover, Hamilton and others opposed to a bill of rights were mollified by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. which clearly state that the list of rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The synthesis of Mason's determined guarding of the rights of U.S. citizens, Hamilton's fervent support of a strong federal government, and Madison's genius at understanding the issues and proposing brilliant compromises, resulted in a document that met all these factions' goals--a document that not only protected people's rights but also reinforced the very principles of freedom upon which this country was founded.