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Oil on wood; 9.5 x 7.3 cm (3 3/4 x 2 7/8 in). Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
Oil on wood; 9.5 x 7.3 cm (3 3/4 x 2 7/8 in). Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
[George] Mason’s obvious legacy is in his contribution to America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence through the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Constitution through his role at the Philadelphia Convention, and the Bill of Rights through his dogged opposition to a Constitution without one. Mason may have taken a circumscribed view of the rights he advocated — limiting the right of representation to white men or restricting freedom of the press to a ban on prior restraint — but he put words on paper that could be given more expansive meanings by later generations.