MERITS Of the virGINIA CONSTITUTION.

263

Convention, where "every man thought himself a George. Mason.' Rives wrote in 1859:

"In looking back to the Constitution of 1776 with all the lights which the intermediate experience of eighty years has shed on the science of popular government, we cannot but be struck with the reach of practical wisdom and sagacious statesmanship exhibited in its construction.. . There cannot be a more

striking proof of the real merits and essential wisdom of the Constitution of 1776 than that in an age of change and revolution it firmly maintained its ground, for a period of fifty-four years, against the persevering assaults of a host of critics and theorists, sustained by the authority of some of the highest names in the State; and, when at last it was superseded by a new experiment, which in its turn has given place to another, that there is hardly now a thinking man of any party in Virginia who would not gladly exchange the modern structure and all its imagined improvements for the ancient Constitution, just as it was, with only a necessary readjustment of the representation to the changes which have taken place in the local distribution of the population." "

Virginia's claim to have given to America and to the world the first written constitution of a free State' has been strangely denied or suppressed by Northern writers and historians. Bancroft, in his chapter on "The Constitutions of the Several States," says that "Massachusetts which was the first State to conduct a government independent of the king assuming that the place of governor was vacant from the 19th July, 1775, recognized the Council as the legal successor to executive power." He then enumerates four other States which formed governments, and makes the extraordinary statement that Virginia was "sixth in the series," though he considerately adds, "first in the completion of her work." The Virginia Convention of July

2

"Howe's Historic Collections."

Life and Times of Madison," vol. i., pp. 153-158.

3 The only plausible exception to this statement is the Cromwellian Constitu

tion of 1653 or Instrument of Government.

4 44 History of America,” vol. ix., ch. xv. See also "Johns Hopkins University Studies," third series. "American Constitutions," etc., etc.

17, 1775, as has been seen, "assuming that the place of governor was vacant," conducted a "government independent of the king," and appointed a Committee of Safety, August 17th, with executive powers for the emergency. Before the other colonies had moved in the matter Virginia declared independence, pronouncing her connection with Great Britain "totally dissolved," on the 29th of June, 1776. New Hampshire and South Carolina, named by Bancroft as forming governments next after Massachusetts, expressly declared them "provisional," and were careful not to renounce their connection with Great Britain. Rhode Island and Connecticut named fourth and fifth by Bancroft, have no pretence whatever to priority over Virginia, the one merely substituting the name of the people for that of the king in its charter, in May, 1776; the other forming its government as late as the 14th of July, 1776. New Hampshire's provisional government, instituted in the winter of 1775-1776, was to last only "during the present unhappy and unnatural contest with Great Britain." In 1784 she framed her regular constitution, with its opening bill of rights. Massachusetts, as Bancroft admits, framed her bill of rights on that of Virginia, and her constitution was not written until 1779.

The adoption of the new seal of the commonwealth was the last act of the Convention of 1776. The design was reported by George Mason, and there is every reason to believe that he was its author. The committee appointed to prepare a seal consisted of Richard Henry Lee, who was, however, not in the Convention, George Mason, Robert Carter Nicholas, and George Wythe. George Wythe and John Page were appointed to superintend the engraving of the seal, which was found not practicable in this country, and the commission was put into the hands of Arthur Lee, then living in Paris. In Girardin's continuation of Burk's "History of Virginia," written under Jefferson's supervision, it is said that Wythe proposed the seal that was adopted by the Convention. But Girardin gives no authority for this statement. And as George Mason was practically the chairman

of the committee on the seal, and reported it to the Convention, the conclusion that he designed it is irresistible. He must have penned the words that describe the seal, in that case, and they are remarkable for clearness and precision:

"VIRTUS, the genius of the commonwealth, dressed like an Amazon, resting on a spear with one hand, and holding a sword in the other, and treading on TYRANNY, represented by a man prostrate, a crown fallen from his head, a broken chain in his left hand, and a scourge in his right. In the exergon, the word VIRGINIA over the head of Virtus; and underneath the words Sic Semper Tyrannis. On the reverse a group, LIBERTAS, with her wand and pileus. On one side of her CERES, with the cornucopia in one hand, and an ear of wheat in the other. On the other side ÆTERNITAS, with the globe and phoenix. In the exergon these words: DEUS NOBIS HÆC OTIA FECIT."

Grigsby seems to assume that George Mason designed the Virginia seal'; and this is taken for granted by the late Colonel Sherwin McRae in his pamphlet on the history of the seal prepared at the time it was restored by the State of Virginia in 1884. The description of it he regards as "one of the most remarkable specimens of precision in expression to be found in any language, and showing unmistakably that its paternity is the same as that of the celebrated declaration of rights." It is claimed by Colonel McRae, who gave much study to the subject, that no other American State has a seal equal to that of Virginia in classic beauty and appropriateness. And the fact that it was described so carefully at the beginning has been of infinite importance in securing its exact reproduction at the present time. New York having no description of her seal, a new one has been formed recently from the designs of three different seals formerly used by her. The seal of a State, as Colonel McRae declares, “is not a bauble, but an important and necessary element of government; indeed the Convention of 1776 was so impressed with this truth that the great

'Virginia Convention of 1776," p. 167.

seal was made a specific constitutional provision." And in summing up George Mason's work in the Virginia Convention, the preparation or designing of the State seal is seen to be the third and concluding portion of his notable achievement. "The great seal of Virginia," says the writer above quoted, "is an essential part of George Mason's plan of government. The first is his declaration of rights, then the constitution, and then the great seal-a Corinthian column with its base, shaft, and capital. To Mason belongs the enviable distinction of conceiving and composing the three parts of the plan of government."

1 Report on the State Seal, House Document, No. xi.; also "New England Historical Register," vol. xxvi.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY.

1776-1778.

The American States were now fully embarked on their career of independent political life. The Articles of Confederation, reported in Congress eight days after the Declaration of Independence, were not ratified, however, until 1778, and then only by ten States. But the bond between the colonies, formed in May, 1775, by which they had established a union for their mutual defence, sufficed at this time for all practical purposes. The military outlook in the fall of this memorable year of independence was not an encouraging one. Washington, obliged to evacuate New York, retreated through the Jerseys in the face of the enemy's superior numbers, and repeated disasters marked the record of the patriot army. Considerable alarm was felt throughout the country, an alarm shared by the Virginia Assembly then in session. This, the first republican Assembly of Virginia, met at Williamsburg on the 7th of October. George Mason was one of the members, and, in fact, the legislature was the same body as the Convention of the preceding spring. George Mason did not take his seat immediately, and ten days after the Assembly opened he was writing to the President of Congress as chairman of the Fairfax Committee, enclosing a resolution of the Council of Virginia, in reference to the defences of Alexandria:

VIRGINIA, FAIRFAX Co., Oct. 17, 1776. SIR: At the request of the inhabitants of the town of Alexandria, I take the liberty to trouble you with the enclosed order