A third observation, among many which can be made, is that for the first time a sovereign state prevented itself and its own legislature from infringing on the basic liberties of its peoples. The possible assault on popular rights by an elected legislature had been made all too vivid by parliament in the 1760's and 1770's.
Edmund Randolph said one aim of the Declaration was to erect "a perpetual standard". John Adams had warned "we all look up to Virginia for example". Neither Randolph nor Adams could have been disappointed. Mason's Declaration of Rights was utilized by Jefferson as he drafted the Declaration of Independence, written into the bills of rights of numerous other states, and finally in 1791 was incorporated into the Federal Constitution as the Bill of Rights.
Declaration of Independence
In Philadelphia, Lee introduced the Virginia independence resolution on June 7, 1776. On that day only seven colonies were prepared to vote "aye". Therefore, congress put off a full vote until July 1, hoping by that date for all states to have received instructions from home. In the meantime congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration. For nearly two weeks Jefferson, with the advice of Adams and Franklin, wrote and rewrote the draft, seeking just the right phrase, the right concept. On June 28 the committee laid its draft before the chamber. On July 4 the Congress completed its revisions. The changes were few when one considers the normal way legislative bodies amend and rewrite the very best of prose. Still the changes were too many for the red-haired delegate from Albemarle County, Virginia, who possessed an ample store of pride in his own words. Jefferson thought his version had been manhandled; Lee went further and said it had been "mangled".
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is timeless. There in clear and unmistakable language is a rationale for revolution, not just 1776, but all revolutions.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
The last thread which held the colonies to Britain was the king and to cut that thread Jefferson and the Congress charged him with all the acts of parliament and the ministries. As Dumas Malone remarks:
The charges in the Declaration were directed, not against the British people or the British Parliament, but against the King. There was a definite purpose in this. Jefferson, and the great body of the Patriots with him, had already repudiated the authority of Parliament.... Now ... the onus must be put on George III himself. Such a personification of grievances was unwarranted on strict historical grounds. This was the language of political controversy, not that of dispassionate scholarship.[35 ]