George Mason: Virginia Declaration of Rights

Context

After the British passed the Stamp Act in 1763, Mason and other Virginians, including Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, were outraged. The historian Dumas Malone notes that despite America's famed Patrick Henry and George Washington, it was “Mason who was the dean of the intellectual rebels in Virginia” (Rutland, 1961, p. xiv). In the spring of 1766 Mason wrote a letter to the London Public Ledger denying treason on behalf of the colonists who had rebelled against the parliamentary acts. Signing his letter “A Virginia Planter,” Mason declared that the American colonists “were tired of being treated as a schoolmaster would handle unruly boys” (Rutland, 1961, p. 34).

In response to the British Revenue Act of 1767 and the Townshend Revenue Act, Mason drafted the Non-Importation Resolves, which his friend George Washington introduced to the House of Burgesses. Though the Virginia governor dissolved the House of Burgesses before the body could adopt the resolves, members of the group gathered at the nearby Raleigh Tavern and voted in favor of them.

Many, including Washington, encouraged Mason to accept an appointment to the House of Burgesses. Mason steadfastly refused the position. He did, however, draft a set of twenty-four resolves in July 1774. Known as the Fairfax Resolves, the document outlined the rights of the American colonists. In the Fairfax Resolves, Mason asserted that as citizens of the British colonies, the colonists should be afforded the same rights as Englishmen. He went on to say that if those rights were denied them, they “were justified in resorting to extralegal devices” (Rutland, 1961, p. 40).

When Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights was introduced to the Virginia Convention, several men found fault with the opening line, which asserts that all men are created free and independent. They claimed that such was not the case, as slaves were not free and independent. The delegates argued about the slavery issue for four days, delaying discussion about the rest of the document. By the time the group approved the document on June 12, 1776, six more items had been added to Mason's ten.

Passing through the Virginia Convention, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was soon read throughout the colonies and in the Continental Congress. By the end of 1776 five states had drafted similar declarations of rights, modeled almost verbatim on Mason's document.

Though a “bill of rights” was not included in the new Constitution drafted by the Constitutional Convention, Richard Henry Lee of the Continental Congress attempted to amend the document by including a declaration of rights. Lee proved unsuccessful, but several other delegates to the Congress agreed that without a declaration of rights, more problems had been created than solved.