Constitution Day visitors to Gunston Hall will be faced with a
choice: to sign or not to sign. It’s an epic choice, one that
prompted a whirlwind debate in 1787 that in some ways continues
to this very day. Making the decision will require learning
about the nature of republics, weighing the evidence of tyranny
and creating a system of checks and balances. For George Mason,
a member of the Virginia planter elite who had toiled all summer
in the broiling hot afternoons of Philadelphia, it was an
important moment. After refusing to sign it, he published 17
specific objections. “There is no Declaration of Rights,” Mason
began. After enumerating his objections, the sage of Gunston
Hall concluded that “the Declaration of Rights in the separate
states are no security, nor are the people secured even in the
enjoyment of the benefit of the common law.” Of course, Mason
wasn’t talking about Virginia — the Old Dominion had the benefit
of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written largely by Mason
himself in Williamsbu