Quotes About George Mason

The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind.

Among the most influential of these was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia constitution and its Declaration of Rights. Responding to the insistent demands of Mason and several others, as well as to similar voices outside the Convention, Mason's fellow Virginian, James Madison, drafted ten amendments that were ratified in 1789–90 by eleven states, more than a sufficient number for their adoption.

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.

Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure.

A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill of Rights.

The Virginia Declaration did not mention the right to assemble and to petition at all; it protected a free press but neglected free speech; and it included the above militia language but not the right to keep and bear arms. Also new was the allowance that standing armies should be avoided only "as far as" possible. The author apparent was George Mason, who simply added these new clauses to the Declaration's language he had drafted in 1776.

It was obvious, whether North or South, that no militia was going to stop a foreign invasion. The war proved that beyond a reasonable doubt.127 What the militia could do rather well, however, as George Mason noted, was keep slave owners safe.