—Thomas Jefferson, April 3, 18251

Life

George Mason was born December 11, 1725, on Dogue’s Neck in present-day Fairfax County, Virginia. He was the eldest child of George Mason III, whose family immigrated to Virginia in the early 1650s, and Ann Thomson Mason. On April 4, 1750, he married Ann Eilbeck, with whom he had 12 children, nine of whom survived to adulthood. In 1758, he completed his Gunston Hall home in Virginia’s Northern Neck. Ann Mason died on March 9, 1773, and Mason subsequently married Sarah Brent on April 11, 1780; at age 50, it was her first marriage. He died October 7, 1792, at Gunston Hall, where he is buried.

Education

Mason studied under private tutors in Virginia and Maryland. He appears to have read widely in law, history, political philosophy, and the classics.

Religion

Anglican/Episcopalian

Political Affiliation

No formal affiliation but associated with Anti-Federalists during debate over ratification of the United States Constitution

Highlights and Accomplishments

The Life of George Mason

George Mason was born on December 11, 1725, on Dogue’s Neck in northern Virginia to an affluent family with roots in the colony extending back to the 1650s. Mason’s father drowned crossing the Potomac River in 1735, leaving the young boy to be raised by his formidable mother, Ann Thomson Mason, the daughter of a prominent Maryland attorney. Mason never strayed far from Dogue’s Neck. After studying with private tutors, he married Ann Eilbeck in 1750 and four years later began constructing one of Virginia’s most elegant plantation homes, Gunston Hall. From there, he managed an estate of over 5,000 acres.

As a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Mason would be described by a fellow delegate, Georgia’s William Pierce, as “undoubtedly one of the best politicians in America.”2 Ironically, Mason demonstrated little political ambition. He served sporadically on his local Fairfax County Court and repeatedly refused higher offices. Elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses in 1758, he attended its fall session, missed subsequent meetings, and left office in 1761. Frequent bouts of gout gave him a plausible excuse. Mason suffered from erysipelas, a painful skin condition, but chronic gout proved more troubling. It attacked his stomach, hands, and feet, and the soreness could last for weeks.

Mason also had other interests beyond politics. A faithful Anglican, he was a longtime vestryman in his Truro Parish church and served from time to time as churchwarden. His beliefs appear to have been quite orthodox. In his will, written in 1773, Mason “cheerfully” resigned himself to the “unbounded mercy and benevolence…of my blessed Savior.”3 Mason also speculated in western lands and, as a managing partner in the Ohio Company, worked tirelessly but with meager success to implement a 1749 land grant from the British government. The French and Indian War disrupted the company’s operations, and it never fully recovered from that disruption.

The death of his wife Ann in March 1773 plunged Mason into a deep depression. Years later, he could still complain of a “settled melancholy…from which I never expect, or desire to recover.” The responsibilities of single parenthood gave Mason another reason to avoid public service, but in April 1780, he remarried, this time to Sarah Brent, the 50-year-old unmarried daughter of a family friend. He died October 7, 1792, at Gunston Hall.

Mason and Virginia Politics

Mason disliked politics and advised his sons “to prefer the happiness of independence & a private Station to the troubles and Vexations of Public Business,”4 but worsening relations with Parliament drew Mason back into the fray. In 1765, after Virginia’s courts had closed to protest the Stamp Act, he drafted a proposal for collecting debts that did not require court action. The proposal signaled Mason’s support for the protest movement, but repeal of the Stamp Act made its adoption unnecessary.5 A year later, in a letter to a committee of London merchants, Mason conceded Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies but rejected its power to tax; castigated its Navigation Acts, which restricted major American exports to British ships and markets, as a costly burden on the imperial economy; and condemned the trial of alleged smugglers in the vice-admiralty courts for denying a defendant’s right to a jury trial.6

Mason took a more active role after Parliament adopted the Townshend Duties, which taxed imported glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea, in 1767. Collaborating with his neighbor George Washington, Mason helped to draft a non-importation agreement modeled after a plan adopted by Philadelphia merchants. Virginia’s plan, approved by an extralegal meeting of the House of Burgesses after the royal governor had dismissed the colonial legislature, called for a boycott of the taxed items and imported luxury goods. Enforcing the boycott proved challenging, especially after Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Duties save for the tax on tea, but Mason lobbied successfully for the creation of county committees that would publicize the names of Virginians who bought British goods in violation of the agreement. As he wrote to Richard Henry Lee, “if Shame was banished out of the World, she wou’d carry away with her what little Virtue is left in it.”7

Mason’s “Extracts from the Virginia Charters,” written in the summer of 1773, shed further light on his thinking. The Privy Council had revoked the power of colonial governors to issue land grants, and Mason was seeking to defend his headright claims to almost 25,000 acres in the West. Virginia’s 1676 charter, he argued, had recognized headright claims, and the colony’s various charters were “solemn Compacts with the Crown.” He went on to assert, at least implicitly, that Parliament might have no authority over the colonies. Because Virginia was settled under charters from the British monarch, Virginians could “be subject only to its Government.”8

Written a year later, Mason’s Fairfax Resolves were more explicit and far more influential. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, a series of punitive measures provoked by the Boston Tea Party. The House of Burgesses called for a special convention to formulate Virginia’s response. After conferring with George Washington, Mason prepared a set of resolves calling for a Continental Congress and the imposition of an economic boycott on Great Britain, to be enforced aggressively. He repeated arguments from the “Extracts” and expanded on them. The Coercive Acts violated Virginia’s colonial charters, the English constitution, and “the natural Rights of Mankind.” Colonial assemblies, Mason now argued, had accepted Parliament’s regulation of American commerce simply as a matter of convenience, not law. Washington took the Fairfax Resolves to the Williamsburg convention—Mason had characteristically refused to serve—where, with a few amendments, they were adopted. The Continental Association, approved by the First Continental Congress in October 1774, generally tracked the Fairfax Resolves.9

In July 1775, Mason reluctantly agreed to replace Washington as one of Fairfax County’s delegates to a third Virginia convention. With the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and Great Britain, Washington had been put in command of the Continental Army. For his part, Mason labored with mixed success and, he said, “Vexation & Disgust” to help organize Virginia’s defenses; his colleagues’ military aspirations far exceeded the colony’s financial resources.10

Mason’s work in the third convention was overshadowed by his service in a fifth convention, which assembled in Williamsburg in May 1776. A year of fighting made a formal declaration of American independence virtually inevitable, and independence would require the creation of new state governments. Mason meanwhile had earned an enviable reputation as an able writer, a learned defender of American rights, and a staunch republican. A committee was appointed to draft a new constitution, but it was overloaded with more than two dozen members. Mason, to widespread relief, took charge.

Mason began with a Declaration of Rights and drew on precedents ranging from the Magna Carta (1215) to the Continental Congress’s Declaration of Rights of October 1774 and on political philosophers from Montesquieu to Algernon Sidney. His first paragraph, proclaiming “[t]hat all Men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural Rights…among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness,” echoed John Locke and would be repeated by Thomas Jefferson (albeit in more felicitous prose) in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

Mason recognized that political sovereignty, “by God and Nature,” rested in the people and acknowledged their right to rebel against an oppressive government. He denounced hereditary privileges and officeholding. He called for the separation of executive and legislative powers and for “frequent, certain and regular Elections.” He added protections for private property, criminal defendants, and “the ancient Tryal by Jury.” He called a virtuous citizenry essential to the preservation of “free Government” and, in the longest section of his draft, asserted “that all Men shou’d enjoy the Fullest Toleration in the Exercise of Religion.” The “Duty which we owe to our divine and omnipotent Creator…can be governed only by Reason and Conviction, not by Force or Violence….”11

Thomas Ludwell Lee, a fellow committee member, made a few additions to Mason’s draft, including language recognizing freedom of the press as “the great bulwark of Liberty.” The full committee made additional changes, some apparently at Mason’s suggestion. He later claimed authorship, for example, of a new provision denouncing “cruel and unusual punishments.”

The full convention approved the committee draft largely as presented, but it also, spurred by James Madison, liberalized the provision on freedom of religion and replaced Mason’s “Fullest Toleration,” which suggested religious liberty was a perhaps grudging gift from the state, with a recognition of all citizens’ equal right to the free exercise of their faith. In light of his later defense of religious freedom, Mason could not have objected. The Virginia Declaration of Rights was widely reprinted in American newspapers and, as the first bill of rights adopted as part of a constitution, became a model for other states, influenced lawmakers around the world, and secured Mason’s place in history.12

Mason took less pride in Virginia’s first state constitution. His “Plan of Government” reflected the influence of Richard Henry Lee’s “A Plan of Government” and John Adams’s “Thoughts on Government.” Mason proposed a two-house legislature with separate executive and judicial branches. Lawmakers would be elected annually. Judges would serve during good behavior. The legislature would appoint most state officials, including the governor and a council of state, which was to advise the chief executive. In keeping with popular resentment of the royal governors, Mason envisioned a weak governor who lacked the veto power and could serve no more than three consecutive one-year terms. His “Plan of Government” contained a few novel proposals, including the creation of an electoral college to select members of the upper house of the Assembly and expansion of voting rights beyond landowners to include fathers of three or more children. The full convention rejected those proposals. Otherwise, by making modest changes in Virginia’s existing government, Mason’s constitution proved generally acceptable to both conservative and more progressive delegates.13

Fairfax County elected Mason to serve in the Assembly’s lower house, now christened the House of Delegates, and from 1776 until 1780, Mason was a legislative workhorse. He collaborated with Jefferson, Madison, and other reformers to expand religious freedom and end state support for the Anglican Church, although he opposed the confiscation of church property and demonstrated no ill will toward organized religion.14 Hoping to put the state government on a sound fiscal basis, Mason sponsored tax legislation and sought to restrict the issuance of paper money, which tended to depreciate rapidly. He helped to settle a boundary dispute with Pennsylvania. Always interested in the West, Mason, in cooperation with Jefferson, supported bills to create a procedure for settling disputed land titles and to create a land office to sell public lands.

The Gunston Hall planter retired from the Assembly in 1781, not to reappear until October 1787, but he did represent Virginia at the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785. Convened by Virginia and Maryland to discuss issues involving the use of the Potomac River, the Mount Vernon Conference led to the Annapolis Convention, which led in turn to the Federal Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.

Mason and the Federal Constitutional Convention

The General Assembly appointed Mason to Virginia’s delegation to Philadelphia, and somewhat uncharacteristically, he agreed to go. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked a secure source of revenue, the power to regulate foreign commerce, and the ability to enforce the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War. Mason saw a need for reform, and after reaching Philadelphia, he was favorably impressed with his fellow delegates. Although never as ardent a nationalist as James Madison, Mason initially supported the Virginia Plan; largely Madison’s work, it envisioned the creation of a far more powerful central government. Mason explicitly endorsed one linchpin of the plan: that the new federal government should be empowered to bypass state governments in some cases and act directly on their citizens.

Mason undoubtedly played a constructive role in the Convention. Speaking frequently, he supported the popular election of the House of Representatives, opposed federal restrictions on voting rights, and opposed discrimination against new states. He proposed that the Constitution take effect when ratified by popular conventions in nine states, thereby circumventing state lawmakers who might be reluctant to surrender power to the national government. The nine-state requirement, moreover, would give it credibility without erecting an insurmountable barrier to ratification. Mason also showed a willingness to compromise and served on the committee that recommended the Great Compromise, under which representation in the House would be based on population and each state would have an equal vote in the Senate.

The Convention’s rejection of one provision of the compromise—the so-called Origination Clause—dealt Mason a critical blow. His longest recorded speech during the Convention was a defense of the committee’s recommendation that tax and appropriations bills originate in the House and not be subject to amendment in the Senate; he never accepted a revision allowing the upper chamber to amend money bills. Worse, from his perspective, was a compromise between New England delegates and those from the Deep South that allowed Congress to pass laws regulating commerce by a simple majority. (To accommodate southern fears that a northern majority would discriminate against southern interests, the delegates had earlier approved a two-thirds threshold for commercial regulations, which Mason had supported.)

Moreover, the delegates forbade Congress from banning the foreign slave trade until 1800, a date later extended to 1808. Mason, passionately opposed to the slave trade, protested this provision. The Convention’s unanimous rejection, toward its end, of Mason’s suggestion that a bill of rights be added to the Constitution extinguished any lingering hope that he might support the document.

Instead, Mason produced his “Objections to This Constitution of Government.” He began with the complaint that “[t]here is no Declaration of Rights,” and although the “Objections” were not widely circulated, Mason gave the Anti-Federalists their most effective argument. Among his other objections, the longest concerned Congress’s ability to pass navigation laws by a simple majority. In summary, “[t]his government,” he wrote, “will set out a moderate aristocracy” and devolve into either “a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy.”15 Mason saw monarchial tendencies in the presidency and aristocratic tendencies in the Senate.

Stafford County voters elected Mason to represent them at the Richmond convention called to consider ratification of the Constitution in Virginia; Federalist supporters of the Constitution dominated his native Fairfax County. Mason and Patrick Henry led the Anti-Federalist opposition. They favored a second, national convention to consider revisions in the draft Constitution, but the best they could do was to persuade the state convention to recommend that several specific amendments, including protections for civil liberties, be adopted after the Constitution took effect. The eventual adoption of the first 10 amendments partially placated Mason, and no one had done more to create the political momentum that produced what we know as the Bill of Rights. Yet he was never fully reconciled to the Constitution. As he wrote in the last year of his life and after Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had unveiled his ambitious financial agenda, “Our new Government is a Government of Stock-jobbing and Favourtism. It required no extraordinary Degree of Penetration, to foresee that it wou’d be so….”16

Protecting the People’s Rights

Three interrelated themes might be said to run through Mason’s political career: the need to protect the people’s rights, the need for a virtuous citizenry, and the need to strike a balance of power between the national and state governments.

The “pole-star of his political conduct,” Mason told the Philadelphia Convention, was “the preservation of the rights of the people,” although he admitted elsewhere that in extreme cases, individual convenience would have to yield to the good of society. Mason feared it was “the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people.” Tyranny arose, he wrote on the eve of the American Revolution, from “the insidious acts of wicked and designing men, the various and plausible pretenses for continuing and increasing authority, the incautious nature of the many, and the inordinate lust of power in the few.”17

Despite his opposition to the consolidation of power in the national government, Mason believed that state and even local officials also could abuse their authority. In a petition written on behalf of freeholders in Prince William County, he condemned Virginia Governor Thomas Nelson for, among other offenses, his arbitrary use of the impressment power during the siege of Yorktown. He exposed the local tobacco inspectors’ practice of overcharging tobacco exporters. Mason conducted a long-running feud with Alexandria merchants on the Fairfax County Court. Over the years, he accused the court of imposing excessive taxes, mismanaging the county poorhouse, building roads to serve private interests, and generally discriminating against the countryside where the majority of the county’s population lived. Mason alleged that the court, as a self-perpetuating body, could not truly represent the people. Mason’s experience with local officials, especially those from the urban commercial classes, fed his political skepticism.

For Mason, the most fundamental rights were the right to effective representation and the “sacred and inestimable Right of Suffrage.” Mason distinguished the two because he believed that for suffrage to be meaningful, the people’s elected representatives had to be granted adequate powers, and legislative bodies had to be free of corruption. While Mason supported expanding voting rights to any white adult male who demonstrated a substantial attachment to his community, it was more critical that voters, whoever they might be, enjoy the right to “chuse the Men who are to make Laws for them.” Otherwise, every other right would be in jeopardy.18

Elections alone, however, could not guarantee those rights unless they were held frequently and provisions made for rotation in office. “Nothing is so essential to the preservation of a republican government as a periodical rotation.” His objections to the Constitution included its failure to ensure “that the great officers of State, and particularly the Executive should at fixed periods return to that mass from which they were at first taken.”19

Mason deplored dual officeholding and legislative job-hopping; he feared the executive could use patronage to manipulate the people’s representatives as he thought the British monarch had done. He favored the separation of powers, especially separation of the power to tax from the power to make war, because “[w]hen the same man, or set of men, holds both the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.”20 Because rulers had often used permanent professional militaries to suppress their own people, he considered standing armies to be “ever dangerous to liberty.” As he told the Virginia Ratifying Convention, “I abominate and detest the idea of a government, where there is a standing army.”21

In short, while Mason is best known for his advocacy of specific constitutional protections for fundamental freedoms, he understood that the preservation of liberty would also require attention to the very structure of a government.

Promoting Virtue

“Virtue,” Mason once wrote, “is the vital principle in a republic.” In his mind, no republican government, however structured, could long survive if its citizens lacked personal probity or a commitment to the good of the community. Republican theorists like Mason held that individual extravagance, found most often in “great commercial cities,” bred avarice, selfishness, and decadence. As the imperial crisis worsened in the 1760s, Mason blamed Great Britain’s colonial policy in part on the nation’s “Wealth, Luxury, Venality, & Corruption.”22 He eagerly supported boycotts of British goods as a form of protest because they discouraged “all Manner of Luxury and Extravagance.” He also hoped that the Non-Importation Agreement of 1769 would “induce the good People of this Colony to be frugal in the Use and Consumption of British Manufactures.” Fortunately, he wrote in 1773, “Luxury, Venality, and a general Corruption of Manners have not yet thoroughly taken Root among us.”23

Yet Mason feared for the future and regularly tested public measures by their impact on the people’s virtue. Notwithstanding his stalwart support for religious liberty, he concurred in the spring of 1779 with the Continental Congress’s call for a day of prayer and fasting: If “not too often repeated,” it could “have a good effect on the Minds of the People.”24 To encourage citizens to do their civic duty, Mason suggested imposing “Moderate Penalties” on eligible voters who failed to vote; he hoped increased voter participation might keep “Men of desperate Circumstances & Principles” out of the General Assembly.

Mason unsuccessfully urged the adoption of sumptuary laws; common in the ancient world, they prohibited conspicuous consumption, often in the form of lavish funerals or excessively ornate clothing. He also labored for years to move the county courthouse from Alexandria to a more central location in the countryside. When confronted with the argument that the move would hurt the town’s taverns, he responded that the government should not encourage people to spend their time and money “in Tipling houses.” On this issue, he ultimately prevailed.25

Mason’s critique of slavery illustrated his concern for public morality. Ironically (and perhaps hypocritically for a large slave owner), he often went out of his way to condemn the institution, especially the foreign slave trade, and its impact on “the Morals and Manners of our people.” In 1765, Mason managed to link his replevin plan for the orderly collection of debts after Virginia’s courts had closed to the need to encourage white immigration and then pivoted to a lesson learned from the fall of the Roman Republic: “[O]ne of the first Signs of the Decay, & perhaps the primary Cause of the Destruction of the most flourishing Government that ever existed was the Introduction of great Numbers of Slaves.” His “Extracts from the Virginia Charters,” ostensibly intended to buttress his headright claims, included a long paragraph describing the effects of slave ownership on whites: “Practiced in Acts of Despotism & Cruelty, we become callous to the Dictates of Humanity, & all the finer feelings of the Soul.”26

The non-importation plans Mason supported as a protest against British imperial policies before the American Revolution included bans on the importation of slaves. The Fairfax Resolves, for example, declared “our most earnest Wishes to see an entire Stop for ever put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.”27 At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Mason supported a federal ban on the slave trade, an “infernal traffic” that increased the risk of a slave rebellion; discouraged manufacturing, free labor, and white immigration; and produced “the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant…. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.”28 If the Convention would not approve an immediate ban on the trade, which to Mason’s dismay it refused to do, he argued that commerce in enslaved people should at least be taxed.

Admittedly, Mason’s rhetoric could sometimes appear opportunistic. During the debate over ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, he denounced the document for allowing the slave trade to continue for at least another 20 years while complaining that the Philadelphia Convention had taken no meaningful steps to protect slavery where it already existed. Mason, however, could be both principled and pragmatic. He attacked the evils of slavery in cases where he could have ignored them and, because the enslaved lacked political rights, opposed counting them as equal to free inhabitants for purposes of representation in Congress, thereby taking a position he acknowledged did not serve Virginia’s interests. As a realist, Mason must have understood that no prospect of abolishing slavery in Virginia existed in his lifetime, but the slave trade could be stopped without infringing on any Virginian’s property rights.

The racial prejudices of the times; his concerns for the economic security of his numerous children; fears of social upheaval; and, as historian Robert Rutland has suggested, his commitment to “the Lockean concept of a propertied society” all combined to prevent Mason from freeing his slaves or proposing a general plan for emancipation. Nevertheless, he understood the danger that slavery posed to the Republic and, unlike a later generation of white southerners, never attempted to justify the South’s “peculiar institution.”29

After the Revolution, the problem of collecting debts that many Virginians owed to British creditors presented, in Mason’s mind, a more immediate test of republican virtue. The Revolutionary War had disrupted normal commercial relations and had hardly improved the financial position of chronically cash-strapped planters. In 1777, they had secured passage of a bill allowing them to pay their debts in badly depreciated paper currency. With independence, many apparently hoped to renege completely on their obligations and persuaded the General Assembly to bar British merchants from bringing collection suits in the state’s courts. In 1780, Mason led a successful effort to repeal the 1777 law, and he supported the provision in the Treaty of Paris, recognizing the continuing validity of the British debts: Their payment was “no more than Justice requires.”30

Unjust laws, Mason warned, “occasion a general Depravity of Manners, bring the Legislature into Contempt, and finally produce Anarchy & public Convulsion.”31 Legislative interference with private contracts and “flagrant Violations of the (state) Constitution” left him disillusioned by the end of the Revolutionary War, and if he did not despair, he was apprehensive about the future. “The Establishment of American Liberty & Independence has placed Happiness & Prosperity within our Reach;” he wrote one correspondent, “but to attain & preserve them must depend upon our own Wisdom & Virtue; judging of the future from the Past, the Prospect is not promising.”32

Balancing State and Federal Power

The American Revolution had been fought partly to preserve the autonomy of the individual 13 colonies. Before and during the conflict, a shared interest in that autonomy united them, however loosely. After the Revolution, building a true American nation would require some sacrifice of power by the newly independent states. Relinquishing power would not come easily. Despite a well-earned reputation as a fiscal conservative who supported the timely collection of taxes and the payments of British debts, and who generally opposed the issuance of paper money, Mason nevertheless objected in 1783 to a congressional proposal to adopt an impost, or a national tax on imports. In a petition to the Virginia General Assembly written on behalf of Fairfax County freeholders, he declared his opposition to “all encroachments of the American Congress upon the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the separate States; and every assumption of power, not expressly vested in them, by the Articles of Confederation.”33

The impost was defeated, but another issue had to be resolved before Mason would consider strengthening the national government. By virtue of its colonial charters, Virginia claimed territory on the frontier that included the present-day state of Kentucky and extended west to the Mississippi River and north to the Great Lakes. Mason, Jefferson, and other Virginians understood that the state could not govern so vast a domain effectively and that clinging to it would incur the resentment of the other states. In fact, jurisdictional disputes over the western territories delayed ratification of the Articles of Confederation until 1780.

In June 1779, Mason drafted resolutions for the General Assembly asserting Virginia’s jurisdiction. He hoped to secure the claims of the Ohio Company, his own headright claims, and the rights of existing settlers. At the same time, he sought to defeat the ambitions of rival land companies and leave enough acreage in the public domain to provide land bounties to veterans and replenish the public coffers with the revenue from land sales. He believed the disputed territory should eventually be ceded to Congress, but the cession would have to be negotiated; Congress could not assume control unilaterally. Writing to Congress on behalf of the Virginia General Assembly in December 1779, Mason declared that an assumption of congressional authority would “establish in Congress a power which in process of Time must degenerate into an intolerable despotism.”34 Negotiations for a voluntary cession tested his patience, but an agreement was finally implemented in 1784.

When Mason arrived in Philadelphia in May 1787, he was reasonably optimistic and apparently convinced by then of the need to create a new national government “with full legislative Powers upon all the Objects of the Union.” Nevertheless, he anticipated “much Difficulty in organizing a Government upon this great Scale” while leaving state legislatures with sufficient power to ensure “the Prosperity & Happiness of their respective Citizens.”35 He worried that a northern majority in Congress would discriminate against the South. To protect regional interests, he favored the creation of a three-person executive branch consisting of members selected from the northern, middle, and southern states, but the proposal garnered little support.

The Convention’s decision to permit Congress to adopt laws regulating foreign trade by a simple majority dealt Mason his most serious defeat, but he came to see other features of the Constitution as also likely to create an overbearing federal government. The Necessary and Proper Clause could become a grant of almost unlimited power to Congress; the Supremacy Clause could allow Congress to preempt state bills of rights; and the federal judiciary, with its broad jurisdiction, could swallow up the state courts.

After serving in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Mason devoted his remaining years to local politics and his domestic affairs. An old-school republican shaped by the struggle against British imperial policy, he believed that political corruption was virtually inevitable in a wealthy commercial society and that unless the people were diligent in defending their rights and discharging their civic duties, America’s governments would become as oppressive as the British Parliament had been.

Jeff Broadwater

Selected Primary Writings

Virginia Declaration of Rights (June 12, 1776)36

A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government.

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, 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 pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Sec. 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

Sec. 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

Sec. 4. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments and privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

Sec. 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burthens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.

Sec. 6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly, ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representative so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good.

Sec. 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.

Sec. 8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

Sec. 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Sec. 10. That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.

Sec. 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.

Sec. 12. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Sec. 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Sec. 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of, the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.

Sec. 15. That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Sec. 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other.

Virginia Constitution (June 29, 1776)37

THE CONSTITUTION OR FORM OF GOVERNMENT, AGREED TO AND RESOLVED UPON BY THE DELEGATES AND THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE SEVERAL COUNTIES AND CORPORATIONS OF VIRGINIA

Whereas George the third, King of Great Britain and Ireland, and elector of Hanover, heretofore intrusted with the exercise of the kingly office in this government, hath endeavoured to pervert the same into a detestable and insupportable tyranny, by putting his negative on laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good:

By denying his Governors permission to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation for his assent, and, when so suspended, neglecting to attend to them for many years:

By refusing to pass certain other laws, unless the persons to be benefitted by them would relinquish the inestimable right of representation in the legislature:

By dissolving legislative Assemblies repeatedly and continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions of the rights of the people:

When dissolved, by refusing to call others for a long space of time, thereby leaving the political system without any legislative head:

By endeavouring to prevent the population of our country, and, for that purpose, obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners:

By keeping among us, in times of peace, standing armies and ships of war:

By effecting to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power:

By combining with others to subject us to a foreign jurisdiction, giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offences:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:

By plundering our seas, ravaging our coasts, burning our towns, and destroying the lives of our people:

By inciting insurrections of our fellow subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation:

By prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by law:

By endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence:

By transporting, at this time, a large army of foreign mercenaries, to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:

By answering our repeated petitions for redress with a repetition of injuries: And finally, by abandoning the helm of government, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.

By which several acts of misrule, the government of this country, as formerly exercised under the crown of Great Britain, is TOTALLY DISSOLVED.

We therefore, the delegates and representatives of the good people of Virginia, having maturely considered the premises, and viewing with great concern the deplorable condition to which this once happy country must be reduced, unless some regular, adequate mode of civil polity is speedily adopted, and in compliance with a recommendation of the General Congress, do ordain and declare the future form of government of Virginia to be as followeth:

The legislative, executive, and judiciary department, shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other: nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time, except that the Justices of the County Courts shall be eligible to either House of Assembly.

The legislative shall be formed of two distinct branches, who, together, shall be a complete Legislature. They shall meet once, or oftener, every year, and shall be called The General Assembly of Virginia. One of these shall be called, The House of Delegates, and consist of two Representatives, to be chosen for each county, and for the District of West-Augusta, annually, of such men as actually reside in, and are freeholders of the same, or duly qualified according to law, and also of one Delegate or Representative to be chosen annually for the city of Williamsburg, and one for the borough of Norfolk, and a Representative for each of such other cities and boroughs as may hereafter be allowed particular representation by the legislature; but when any city or borough shall so decrease, as that the number of persons, having right of suffrage therein, shall have been for the space of seven years successively, less than half the number of voters in some one county in Virginia, such city or borough thenceforward shall cease to send a Delegate or Representative to the Assembly.

The other shall be called The Senate, and consist of twenty four members, of whom thirteen shall constitute a House to proceed on business, for whose election the different counties shall be divided into twenty four districts, and each county of the respective district, at the time of the election of its Delegates, shall vote for one Senator, who is actually a resident and freeholder within the district, or duly qualified according to law, and is upwards of twenty five years of age; and the Sheriffs of each county, within five days at farthest, after the last county election in the district, shall meet at some convenient place, and from the poll, so taken in their respective counties, return, as a Senator, the man who shall have the greatest number of votes in the whole district. To keep up this Assembly by rotation, the districts shall be equally divided into four classes and numbered by lot. At the end of one year after the general election, the six members, elected by the first division, shall be displaced, and the vacancies thereby occasioned supplied from such class or division, by new election, in the manner aforesaid. This rotation shall be applied to each division, according to its number, and continued in due order annually.

The right of suffrage in the election of members for both Houses shall remain as exercised at present, and each House shall choose its own Speaker, appoint its own officers, settle its own rules of proceeding, and direct writs of election, for the supplying intermediate vacancies.

All laws shall originate in the House of Delegates, to be approved of or rejected by the Senate, or to be amended, with consent of the House of Delegates; except money-bills, which in no instance shall be altered by the Senate, but wholly approved or rejected.

A Governor, or chief magistrate, shall be chosen annually by joint ballot of both Houses (to be taken in each House respectively), deposited in the conference room; the boxes examined jointly by a committee of each House, and the numbers severally reported to them, that the appointments may be entered (which shall be the mode of taking the joint ballot of both Houses, in all cases) who shall not continue in that office longer than three years successively, nor be eligible, until the expiration of four years after he shall have been out of that office. An adequate, but moderate salary, shall be settled on him, during his continuance in office; and he shall, with the advice of a Council of State, exercise the executive powers of government according to the laws of this Commonwealth; and shall not, under any pretence, exercise any power or prerogative by virtue of any law, statute or custom of England: But he shall, with the advice of the Council of State, have the power of granting reprieves or pardons, except where the prosecution shall have been carried on by the House of Delegates, or the law shall otherwise particularly direct; in which cases, no reprieve or pardon shall be granted, but by resolve of the House of Delegates.

Either House of the General Assembly may adjourn themselves respectively. The Governor shall not prorogue or adjourn the Assembly, during their sitting, nor dissolve them at any time; but he shall, if necessary, either by advice of the Council of State, or on application of a majority of the House of Delegates, call them before the time to which they shall stand prorogued or adjourned.

A Privy Council, or Council of State, consisting of eight members, shall be chosen, by joint ballot of both Houses of Assembly, either from their own members or the people at large, to assist in the administration of government. They shall annually choose out of their own members, a President, who, in case of death, inability, or necessary absence of the Governor from the government, shall act as Lieutenant-Governor. Four members shall be sufficient to act, and their advice and proceedings shall be entered on record; and signed by the members present, (to any part whereof any member may enter his dissent) to be laid before the General Assembly, when called for by them. This Council may appoint their own Clerk, who shall have a salary settled by law, and take an oath of secrecy, in such matters as he shall be directed by the board to conceal. A sum of money, appropriated to that purpose, shall be divided annually among the members, in proportion to their attendance; and they shall be incapable, during their continuance in office, of sitting in either House of Assembly. Two members shall be removed. by joint ballot of both Houses of Assembly. at the end of every three years, and be ineligible for the three next years. These vacancies, as well as those occasioned by death or incapacity, shall be supplied by new elections, in the same manner.

The Delegates for Virginia to the Continental Congress shall be chosen annually, or superseded in the mean time, by joint ballot of both Houses of Assembly.

The present militia officers shall be continued, and vacancies supplied by appointment of the Governor, with the advice of the Privy-Council, on recommendations from the respective County Courts; but the Governor and Council shall have a power of suspending any officer, and ordering a Court Martial, on complaint for misbehaviour or inability, or to supply vacancies of officers, happening when in actual service.

The Governor may embody the militia, with the advice of the Privy Council; and when embodied, shall alone have the direction of the militia, under the laws of the country.

The two Houses of Assembly shall, by joint ballot, appoint Judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and General Court, Judges in Chancery, Judges of Admiralty, Secretary, and the Attorney-General, to be commissioned by the Governor, and continue in office during good behaviour. In case of death, incapacity, or resignation, the Governor, with the advice of the Privy Council, shall appoint persons to succeed in office, to be approved or displaced by both Houses. These officers shall have fixed and adequate salaries, and, together with all others, holding lucrative offices, and all ministers of the gospel of every denomination, be incapable of being elected members of either House of assembly or the Privy Council.

The Governor, with the advice of the Privy Council, shall appoint Justices of the Peace for the counties; and in case of vacancies, or a necessity of increasing the number hereafter, such appointments to be made upon the recommendation of the respective County Courts. The present acting Secretary in Virginia, and Clerks of all the County Courts, shall continue in office. In case of vacancies, either by death, incapacity, or resignation, a Secretary shall be appointed, as before directed; and the Clerks by the respective Courts. The present and future Clerks shall hold their offices during good behaviour, to be judged of, and determined in the General Court. The Sheriffs and Coroners shall be nominated by the respective Courts, approved by the Governor, with the advice of the Privy Council, and commissioned by the Governor. The Justices shall appoint Constables; and all fees of the aforesaid officers be regulated by law.

The Governor, when he is out of office, and others, offending against the State, either by maladministration, corruption, or other means by which the safety of the State may be endangered, shall be impeachable by the House of Delegates. Such impeachment to be prosecuted by the Attorney-General, or such other person or persons as the House may appoint in the General Court, according to the laws of the land. If found guilty, he or they shall be either forever disabled to hold any office under government, or removed from such office pro tempore, or subjected to such pains or penalties as the laws shall direct.

If all or any of the Judges of the General Court should on good grounds (to be judged of by the House of Delegates) be accused of any of the crimes or offences above mentioned, such House of Delegates may, in like manner, impeach the Judge or Judges so accused, to be prosecuted in the Court of Appeals; and he or they, if found guilty, shall be punished in the same manner as is prescribed in the preceding clause.

Commissions and grants shall run, “In the name of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” and bear test by the Governor, with the seal of the commonwealth annexed. Writs shall run in the same manner, and bear test by the Clerks of the several Courts. Indictments shall conclude, “Against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth.”

A treasurer shall be appointed annually, by joint ballot of both Houses.

All escheats, penalties, and forfeitures, heretofore going to the King, shall go to the Commonwealth, save only such as the Legislature may abolish, or otherwise provide for.

The territories, contained within the Charters, erecting the Colonies of Maryland, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, are hereby ceded, released, and forever confirmed, to the people of those Colonies respectively, with all the rights of property, jurisdiction and government, and all other rights whatsoever, which might, at any time heretofore, have been claimed by Virginia, except the free navigation and use of the rivers Potomaque and Pokomoke, with the property of the Virginia shores and strands, bordering on either of the said rivers, and all improvements, which have been, or shall be made thereon. The western and northern extent of Virginia shall, in all other respects, stand as fixed by the Charter of King James I, in the year one thousand six hundred and nine, and by the public treaty of peace between the Courts of Great Britain and France in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three; unless by act of this Legislature, one or more governments be established westward of the Alleghany mountains. And no purchases of land shall be made of the Indian natives, but on behalf of the public, by authority of the General Assembly.

In order to introduce this government, the Representatives of the people met in the convention shall choose a Governor and Privy Council, also such other officers directed to be chosen by both Houses as may be judged necessary to be immediately appointed. The Senate to be first chosen by the people, to continue until the last day of March next, and the other officers until the end of the succeeding session of Assembly. In case of vacancies, the Speaker of either House shall issue writs for new elections.

Recommended Readings

• Jeff Broadwater, George Mason, Forgotten Founder (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
• Pamela Copeland and Richard K. MacMaster, The Five George Masons: Patriots and Planters of Virginia and Maryland (Lorton, VA: Board of Regents of Gunston Hall, 1989).
• Terry K. Dunn, ed., The Recollections of John Mason: George Mason’s Son Remembers His Father and Life at Gunston Hall (Marshall, VA: EPM Publications, 2004).
• Helen Hill Miller, George Mason, Gentleman Revolutionary (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
• John R. Vile, More Than a Plea for a Declaration of Rights: The Constitutional and Political Thought of George Mason of Virginia (Clark, NJ: Talbot Publishing, 2019).
• Peter Wallenstein, “Flawed Keepers of the Flame: The Interpreters of George Mason,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 102, No. 2 (April 1994), pp. 229–260.

Notes