e decree is gone forth, and it
cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has
prevailed in other parts of the earth, must be established
in America. That exuberance of pride which has produced an
insolent domination in a few, a very few, opulent,
monopolizing families, will be brought down nearer to the
confines of reason and moderation than they have been used
to.... I shall ever be happy in receiving your advice by
letter, until I can be more completely so in seeing you here
in person, which I hope will be soon."[248]

On the 12th of June, the convention adopted without a dissenting voice
its celebrated "declaration of rights," a compact, luminous, and
powerful statement, in sixteen articles, of those great fundamental
rights that were henceforth to be "the basis and foundation of
government" in Virginia, and were to stamp their character upon that
constitution on which the committee were even then engaged. Perhaps
no political document of that time is more worthy of study in
connection with the genesis, not only of our state constitutions, but
of that of the nation likewise. That the first fourteen articles of
the declaration were written by George Mason has never been disputed:
that he also wrote the fifteenth and the sixteenth articles is now
claimed by his latest and ablest biographer,[249] but in opposition to
the testimony of Edmund Randolph, who was a member both of the
convention itself and of the particular committee in charge of the
declaration, and who has left on record the statement that those
articles were the work of Patrick Henry.[250] The fifteenth article
was in these words: "That no free government, or the blessings 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." The sixteenth article
is an assertion of the doctrine of religious liberty,--the first time
that it was ever asserted by authority in Virginia. The original
draft, in which the writer followed very closely the language used on
that subject by the Independents in the Assembly of Westminster, stood
as follows:--

"That religion, or the duty we owe our Creator, and the
manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason
and conviction, and not by force or violence; and,
therefore, that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration