George Mason: Letter to the Committee of Merchants in London

George Mason’s overriding concern in both his public and private life was the preservation of citizens’ rights and liberties. Early in his career, he was active in Virginia politics, and in such documents as the Virginia Declaration of Rights, his focus was on the rights and liberties of Virginians. But as the British Parliament continued to infringe those rights in all the colonies and war broke out between Britain and the colonies, Mason widened his focus to include the entire nation. He was an opponent of excess taxation and believed that the British parliament was overstepping its bounds in imposing taxes on the citizenry without their consent. In his Letter to the Committee of Merchants in London (1766), Mason protested the patronizing attitude of a group of London merchants who had scolded the colonists in a public letter for not complying with the dictates of the British parliament. He sought to assert the colonists’ rights as British subjects and pointed out the “Oppression” of such measures as the Stamp Act.