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In Philadelphia 250 years ago, Thomas Jefferson was commencing work on a writing assignment in the upstairs of a house at what is now Market and South 7th streets. A couple of hundred miles to the south, on this day in 1776 Jefferson’s patriotic pals approved a helpful first draft: the Virginia Declaration of Rights. There was one pal in particular, George Mason, who served as the lead author. Richard Brookhiser wrote years ago in the Journal about the Virginia declaration: Jefferson had Mason’s words on his desk in Philadelphia as he took up his own writing assignment; his tweaks would make these words immortal, but Mason’s first draft is very good. That’s for sure. While it lacks the poetry of Jefferson’s triumph, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was definitely moving in the right direction: That all men are by nature
equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights… namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. The second section clarifies that we don’t work for government officials; they work for us:
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