University of Virginia Library

TO GEORGE MASON.

Dear Sir:—I am much obliged by your polite attention
in sending me the Copies of the Remonstrance in behalf of
Religious Liberty which with your letter of the 10th came
duly to hand. I had supposed they were to be preserved
at the office which printed them and referred Mrs. Cutts to
that source. Her failure there occasioned the trouble you so
kindly assumed. I wished a few copies on account of applications
now & then made to me and I preferred the Edition of
which you had sent me a sample, as being in the simplest of
forms, and for the further reason that the pamphlet edition
had inserted in the caption, the term "toleration" not in the
Article declaring the Right. The term being of familiar
use in the English Code had been admitted into the original
Draught of the Declaration of Rights but on a suggestion
from myself was readily exchanged for the phraseology
excluding it.[96] The Biographical tribute you meditate is
justly due to the merits of your ancestor Col. Geo. Mason.
It is to be regretted that highly distinguished as he was the
memorials of them we record, or perhaps otherwise attainable
are more scanty than of many of his contemporaries far
inferior to him in intellectual powers and in public services.
It would afford me much pleasure to be a tributary to your
undertaking; but tho' I had the advantage of being on the list
of his personal friends and in several instances of being
associated with him in public life I can add little for the pages
of your work.

My first acquaintance of him was in the convention of Va.
in 1776 which instructed her delegates to propose in Congress
a Declaration of Independence and which formed the Declaration
of rights and the Constitution for the State. Being young
and inexperienced I had of course but little agency in those
proceedings. I retain however a perfect impression that he

was a leading champion for the Instruction; that he was
the author of the Declaration as originally drawn and with
very slight variations adopted; and that he was the Master
Builder of the Constitution & its main expositor & supporter
throughout the discussions which ended in the establishment.
How far he may have approved it in all its features as established
I am not able to say; and it is the more difficult, now
to discern unless the private papers left by him should give
the information as at that day no debates were taken down
and as the explanatory votes, if such there were, may have
occurred in Committee of whole only, and of course not
appear in the Journals. I have found among my papers a
printed copy of the Constitution in one of its stages, which
compared with the Instrument finally adopted, shews some
of the changes it underwent, but in no instance at whose
suggestion, or by whose votes.

I have also a printed copy of a sketched constitution which
appears to have been the primitive draft on the subject. It
is so different in several respects from the other copy in point
& from the Constitution finally passed that it may be more
than doubted whether it was from the hand of your grandfather.
There is a tradition that it was from that of Meriwether
Smith whose surviving papers if to be found among
his descendants might throw light on the question. I ought
to be less at a loss than I am in speaking of these circumstances
having been myself an added member to the committee,
But such has been the lapse of time that without
any notes of what passed and with the many intervening
scenes absorbing my attention my memory can not do justice
to my wishes. Your grandfather as the Journals shew was
at a later day added to the committee being doubtless absent
when it was appointed or he never would have been overlooked.

The public situation on which I had the best opportunity
of being acquainted with, the genius, the opinions & the
public labours of your grandfather was that of our co-service
in the Convention of 1787 which formed the Constitution

of the U. S. The objections which led him to withhold his
name from it have been explained by himself. But none who
differed from him on some points will deny that he sustained
throughout the proceedings of the body the high character of
a powerful Reasoner, a profound Statesman and a devoted
Republican.

My private intercourse with him was chiefly on occasional
visits to Gunston when journeying to & fro from the North,
in which his conversations were always a feast to me. But
tho' in a high degree such, my recollection after so long an
interval can not particularize them in a form adapted to
biographical use, I hope others of his friends still living
who enjoyed much more of his Society will be able to do more
justice to the fund of instructive observations & interesting
anecdotes for which he was celebrated. ...