One of America's most important documents
was on this day in 1776 unanimously adopted by the Virginia Convention of Delegates. Written by George Mason, it predates both our national Declaration of Independence by several weeks, and our national Bill of Rights by more than a decade.
Yet few people, even in Virginia, learn about this document.
It is not that Mason was writing in a total vacuum. After all, Englishmen had a history of protection of rights beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215, from which one of our most basic rights, that of trial by jury, derived. Think about it - in just 4 years we will celebrate the 900th anniversary of that document. The idea of limiting of government and protecting the people continued through things like the Petition of Right and the English Bill of