George Mason authored some of the most compelling political treatises of the Revolutionary period. He wrote the Fairfax Resolves of July 18, 1774; Virginia's Declaration of Rights; and "Objections to the Federal Constitution." An ardent constitutionalist, advocate of the disestablishment of religion, and enemy of slavery, he was a strong supporter of the Bill of Rights.

Mason began a life of politics in 1754 when he served as the trustee for the town of Alexandria, Virginia, and on the local court of Fairfax County. He also gave his time to Truro Parish as a vestryman, overseeing its relief activities for the poor. In 1752 he assumed the role of treasurer in the Ohio Company of Virginia. In this capacity he authored Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them (1773), a study inspired by Great Britain's attempt to abrogate Virginia's claims to what later became the Northwest Territory.

As the events leading toward the Revolutionary War (1775-83) unfolded, Mason assumed an increasingly important role in the process of founding the new nation. During the late 1750s, he had served in Virginia's House of Burgesses with George Washington. Mason's stinging public criticisms of the Crown's efforts to levy and collect taxes provided constitutional rationales with far-reaching import. In June 1766 he penned an open letter in opposition to the Stamp Act (1765), underscoring the colonists' resolve to be loyal but not at the cost of their freedom. His argument against the Boston Port Bill (1774) and other Coercive Acts (1774)--entitled the Fairfax Resolves of July 18, 1774--was adopted as the constitutional position of Fairfax's county court, the Virginia convention, and the First Continental Congress. In this bitter attack, Mason contended that through laws like the Boston Port Bill, the British government was endeavoring "to fix the shackles of slavery upon us."

Mason's crowning achievement was his authoring of the Declaration of Rights at Virginia's convention in May 1776. This document influenced the Declaration of Independence, was readily adopted by several other states, and served as the foundation for the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. At the same convention, Mason wrote significant portions of Virginia's constitution, and served in the state legislature during the Revolutionary War.

After a brief retirement, Mason returned to public life during the late 1780s. Though absent from the Annapolis Convention, he attended the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787. He argued against the creation of too strong a federal government, implored his colleagues not to allow state militias to languish in favor of a standing army, and looked askance at the provision for presidential pardons. To defend against the accretion of too much power in the executive, Mason proposed a three-person executive that included one representative from three different regions. Later in the convention he advocated a six-person council of state, also regionally representative, that would serve as a constitutional council. Its primary responsibility would have been to make appointments and to serve as an advisory body. The convention rejected these provisions.

Consistent with his skepticism toward consolidated power, Mason expressed concern over the vesting of legislative, executive, and judicial authority in the Senate. He also argued for a bill of rights, a position that became the cornerstone of the Anti-Federalists' dissent. The failure to include a bill of rights pushed Mason reluctantly into the Anti-Federalist camp. A propertied gentleman, he loathed the very state politics that Anti-Federalists sought to defend; it was his distaste for this pettiness that had driven him into retirement not once but twice. Nonetheless, his opposition to certain clauses in the Constitution and the absence of a bill of rights compelled him not to sign the founding document. He seconded Edmund Randolph's proposal to allow state conventions to propose amendments to the Constitution that would be further considered by a second national general convention. In so doing, Mason opined, "This Constitution has been formed without the knowledge or idea of the people. A second Convention will know more of the sense of the people, and be able to provide a system more consonant with it." In his pamphlet "Objections to the Federal Constitution," Mason focused on the issue of popular sovereignty, urged the Virginia convention not to ratify, called for a bill of rights, and opposed the convention's compromise on slavery. Mason never became fully reconciled to the U.S. Constitution even after the election of his friend Washington to the presidency and the passage of the Bill of Rights. He declined a Senate seat in 1790 and died in his home at Gunston Hall on October 7, 1792.

Bibliography:

1)         H. H. Miller, George Mason: Gentleman Revolutionary (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975)

2)         Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Knopf, 1996)

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