George Mason wrote most of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted in 1776, an influence on American founding ideas.
The Virginia Convention adopted the declaration on June 12, 1776. Mason drafted its central text, which stated that people possess inherent rights and that government exists to protect them. It also described government as accountable to the community and defended freedoms involving elections, the press, and religion.
The document influenced Virginia’s constitution and later American constitutional thought. Its opening language about equality and natural rights is especially important in the history of rights declarations, although the political community of 1776 excluded many people from full participation, including women, enslaved people, and Indigenous peoples.
George Mason later attended the Constitutional Convention but refused to sign the United States Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights and because he opposed compromises involving slavery. The Virginia declaration is not the same document as the Declaration of Independence, though both emerged in 1776.